


The Road Less Traveled

by Guede



Series: Edge [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Drinking, Chains, Control Issues, Demonic Possession, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Dysfunctional Family, Episode: s01e21 Salvation, Episode: s01e22 Devil's Trap, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hand Jobs, Hostage Situations, Incest, Jealousy, M/M, Mind Games, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Self-Harm, The Colt (Supernatural), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:47:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27868638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: The Winchesters now have Luther, but as the final confrontation with the demon nears, they aren't certain how trustworthy he is. For that matter, they aren't sure how trustworthy they are themselves.
Relationships: Luther (Supernatural: Dead Man's Blood)/Dean Winchester, Luther (Supernatural: Dead Man's Blood)/Sam Winchester
Series: Edge [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036881
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	1. Stumble Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2006.

Dean bit down on his tongue till the blood welled up. It didn’t cut through the hot pounding in his head for very long, but any second was a relief. He didn’t have any other way to not hear the harsh breathing, the wet slaps and rasps of sweaty skin on skin. No other way to ignore the heavy sweet smell of sex that curled invitingly in the air, the taste of it coating his tongue every time he opened his mouth to hiss out a breath.

Luther had explained the possible alternative methods to feeding to Dad, and God, had Dean been happy to miss most of that conversation. He’d been less happy when Dad had asked why Dean couldn’t do the same, but Sam had managed that discussion, talking about the different types of vampires without ever mentioning that sex and blood were now the same to Dean, and if he had both at once he’d completely lose control of himself. So Dean supposed he could take a little chaperoning duty in return, but _God_. Would Luther hurry it up?

He gave the stall door he was holding shut a kick, just to remind the son of a bitch that they didn’t have all night. Instead he got a hand with inch-long hot pink nails flailing at his eyes and the kind of screeching he hadn’t heard since the thing in the cave in Montana.

Dean swore and backed off, only to make a wild grab for the stall door to keep it from swinging open. At the same time, someone tried to open the door to the bathroom. First they jiggled the handle, and then they unlocked it and jiggled the handle, but that didn’t do them any good due to the trashcan Dean had jammed up against the door. Still, the fact that they had a key was slightly worrying. “Luther?”

“Fucking great.” Dazed eyes, their mascara running rings around them, beamed up at Dean. The girl patted the door till Dean let her out, awkwardly pulling at her clothes. She had been wearing some fruity perfume when they’d picked her out, but now the smell had fermented, turned dark and rich and earthy so Dean’s nails were drawing blood from his palms before he realized. “Love your friend, hon. Sure you don’t want me to love you, too?”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Dean muttered, stepping back before her fingers could do more than graze his fly. The touch still woke a line of fire that snaked all the way up to the blood in his mouth. He’d bit his tongue. He ignored her and looked at Luther, who appeared to be listening to the angry shouting outside. “We need to go. Now.”

Luckily, the window in this place was of a decent size. Dean momentarily felt a little bad for leaving the girl to take the heat like that, but then he remembered she’d let herself get cornered in a bathroom with two men. And maybe it’d been dark in the club, but it’d still been pretty obvious that Luther wasn’t in peak condition. He’d been pale and unsteady on his feet, and so hungry he couldn’t keep his teeth rounded and blunt.

“Dean, they’re not following us,” Luther said. He looked better now, able to keep up through the trash in the alleyways, but he still wasn’t anything near how he’d been when they had met.

He was lucky he looked that well, all considering. Finding women at the right stage in their cycle who also wouldn’t think too closely about a guy wanting to eat them out with that going on wasn’t exactly easy. It also took up a hell of a lot of time that could be used on other—a hand touched Dean’s shoulder and he whirled around.

A second later, he blinked. Luther didn’t and instead stared back, his head jammed up against the wall’s drainpipe. “Hungry?”

“Shut up.” They were close enough so that Dean could smell the sex and blood on Luther’s breath. A little smear of red at the corner of Luther’s mouth kept drawing Dean’s eyes, though he tried to watch the rest of Luther’s face; son of a bitch was too clever for Dean to let anything go.

He was also too clever to be believed even when he was cooperating, like now with his silent gaze. He shifted once, trying to move his right hand, and Dean had the wrist pinned back before he knew what he was doing. The tendons flexed against Dean’s palm and he couldn’t help leaning in, taking deep breaths. Beneath his skin was an itch, a prickling susurration that was slowly spreading from their points of contact—hands and wrists, knees and knees—outward to stroke maddeningly over Dean’s body.

“You could ask,” Luther suddenly said, low and rough. He shrugged, scratching up against the wall, ripping the fibers in his shirt. Every single breaking thread was audible to Dean, thrown into feverishly sharp relief. “Want it?”

“Shut _up_.” Not again, damn it. Blood had done Dean fine over the past few days, and he had been feeling fine earlier. He’d even managed to not flinch when Sam had accidentally brushed against him while passing by him, so he wasn’t hungry, damn it. He’d told himself he wasn’t resorting to this again. “Stop sucking up to me. I know what you’re doing, you know. You get this and then you’ve got to eat again, and it’ll all start over.”

Oddly enough, Luther frowned at that. He started to move again, too fast and triggering things in Dean that snarled and stretched in the dark. The bricks behind them groaned when Dean slammed Luther back up, low beneath the threshold of regular hearing, sounding like the slow creaking of an especially cheap bed.

“I had two girls. I’m almost full,” Luther said, and they were so close together there was no way he was missing Dean’s confusion. “Don’t you remember?”

Girl…girls. Dean struggled with the memories of the past couple hours. Mostly they were of the bathroom, but were the walls blue or brown? Did he jam the door with a chair or a trashcan? Did he—

\--Dean flinched and it went away. But when he didn’t move, Luther bent down again and traced Dean’s pulse, flattening his tongue against it again and again. And Dean couldn’t remember but he could feel, smell, taste. His stomach growled and curled close to the back of his spine, wrenching the bones so he slid forward.

There wasn’t a pulse in Luther’s neck. He could press his mouth as hard as he wanted, rub his teeth against it so Luther’s hips shifted jerky and hard, and still not feel a thing. He did press his mouth that hard, and then harder so at least he could taste the blood seeping up through the skin even if he couldn’t feel it. Luther hissed, moved his knees and Dean sank his fingers into Luther’s shoulders till he felt bone grate for that. He worked his mouth up, found a smear of blood on the underside of Luther’s jaw that he hadn’t seen before and the taste of it was a burst of fire in Dean’s mouth.

But too short, too cool still, and he knew it could go hotter than that. He dragged his hand down Luther’s chest, feeling it heave even if the breathing wasn’t exactly necessary, and his fingertips tingled. Made Dean briefly wonder if drinking this way was like some sponge thing and not so much a mosquito—but then his hand was inside Luther’s pants and Luther was making some strangled noise while his arousal just flooded Dean, filling his mouth with bittersweet dizziness like some strong smooth ale. Warming.

Maybe Luther didn’t have a pulse, but something was pounding in Dean’s head, pushing and twisting till his skin wasn’t prickling anymore but straining. Stretching and pulling in, out and in, sucking till suddenly the last bit came loose and snapped into him.

The world abruptly cleared up, leaving Dean with come drying in his jeans and more come sticking the cock in his hand to his fingers. He wanted to shove away and he wanted to collapse at the same time—in the end, he went for leaning for a second because he was so much more tired than he’d realized. At least he hadn’t kissed the son of a bitch this time.

Luther was back to chalky instead of plain pale, but he could walk fine. It apparently took a while for his mind to get back to speed, because he shot Dean a look like he was concerned. Which he wasn’t, and usually he didn’t bother since he knew damn well Dean wouldn’t buy it. “You can’t keep starving yourself like this. Does Sam know—”

“Don’t talk about Sam,” Dean said. He scrubbed at his hand some more as he turned away. “Come on already. Night’s half over and we still have two hospitals to break into.”

* * *

“All right, here’s the list so far.” Yawning, Sam handed over the sheets. He had a stack an inch thick in his lap, and when Dean leaned over to take his share of the list, he could see the other papers didn’t have anything to do with local babies. Sam saw and shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Trawled a couple online libraries on demons. I found some more stuff on magic circles that might be useful.”

Dean glanced around the room, but he knew it was pointless even as he did it. If Dad had been coming, he would’ve been able to hear the truck’s engine while Dad was still pulling off the highway. 

Dad had taken the hospital on the other side of town, so that was to be expected. In fact, Dean had meant to take that into account, and that had been why he’d agreed to let Luther detour on a feeding trip. He hadn’t wanted them to get home before Dad did, but he’d sure fucked that up.

“You can use them to hold demons, too,” Sam was saying. He picked out one sheet and turned it around so Dean could see the ringed pentagram on it. Then his brow wrinkled and he slid his hands forward so he could hunch over the paper, trying read it upside-down. “Well. Theoretically. All the examples I can find online feel…wrong.”

“Maybe because you’re not supposed to be looking at them.” Dean was still of the mind that Sam needed to stay the hell the way from anything to do with magic. Preferably that would include anything to do with the demon as well, but as much as Dean worried, he couldn’t say that Sam had no right to come along on the hunt. “I thought we talked about this—”

Sam just looked at Dean for a long second, his eyes a pair of raw sores. Then he blinked and his whole face shuttered, the line of his jaw going tight and stubborn. “Sorry, I thought you _wanted_ this demon dead.”

With that, Sam was up and stalking towards the bathroom before Dean could lunge over to grab him. He hadn’t bothered to take the papers off his lap before he’d gotten up, so a flurry of sheets kept Dean from going after him right away. So Dean started to call after him, but then remembered the other guy in the room.

Luther had been sitting next to Dean on the other bed, but now he was snatching papers out of the air, occasionally pausing to look more closely at one. He startled a little when Dean yanked the sheets out of his hands. “He’s got the right idea. Demons aren’t going to hold still for you to exorcise them, and ones at this level are going to need more than chains.”

“If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” Dean snapped. He glanced over his shoulder, saw that Sam hadn’t completely shut the bathroom door, and decided he had the time to deal with Luther first. “And stop _staring_.”

A few more papers were floating in the air and Luther wasted no time getting himself another one. He squinted at it, then turned it upside-down. Then turned it back, still looking confused. In spite of himself, Dean was a little amused; Sam’s handwriting turned into something more like hieroglyphics when he was tired enough.

“At you? You’re not my type, feeding aside. Are you sure you took enough earlier?” The first part had been flippant, but the second part sounded genuinely serious. It even came with another one of those concerned looks, though this one had a good-sized streak of assessment in it. “Being hungry shouldn’t—”

“Well, we kind of established that you and me aren’t the same kind of bloodsucker, didn’t we? And you know damned well I wasn’t talking about me. Stop eying my brother before I whack off your head and blame it on the demon.” The bathroom door slammed shut, drawing Dean’s attention back to Sam just in time for him to miss his chance. He momentarily thought about picking the lock and forcing his way in, but that’d just make things worse.

Besides, the entire point had been to keep Sam away from two things: magic and Luther. In that respect, things had worked out pretty well. Yeah. Real well.

Dean sat down on the bed, in the warm dip where Sam had been. He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, wondering if aspirin still worked on him. They’d never really had the chance to see, since all he needed to heal from practically anything, apparently, was a little blood or a little…and Sam was always giving before Dean could stop him.

“You should stop looking at him. Your father’s no idiot—as soon as the demon’s off his mind, he’ll notice,” Luther said. Calm and slow and reasonable, like it was all normal to him. It probably was, sick and perverted and _wrong_ as it was. He was a monster, and that was how monsters were.

“Don’t change the subject. You’re not getting to Sam. If you even _think_ about it—” Leaving it there, Dean shuffled papers till he found the list of names and addresses. The demon mattered more than the annoying vampire, he reminded himself. They didn’t have that long and they’d yet to figure out which house it’d be.

Something white and thin moved at the edge of Dean’s vision, making him jerk his head up. He stared at the map Luther was holding out for several seconds before he actually realized what he was, and took it. Luther added on a bitter half-smile. “Then why don’t you just think of it as _feeding_ , and get it over with? For survival’s sake? He’s not exactly easy to ignore when you’re right in front of me and pushing the subject at me.”

“What? You’re only human?” All right, it wasn’t the best comeback ever since it cut both ways, but Dean was…

Well, he was feeling great, thanks to the feed that they weren’t really talking about and were talking about in sharp detail that went beyond uncomfortable. His body felt great and if he didn’t remember the razor of terror that’d cut through him when Sam had blown fire into the world, he never would’ve thought he’d had a broken ankle only days ago. His mind was wonderfully clear and so he could think about all the thoughts and sensations and likings that twisted in the dark, slick and sweet and sick. Yeah. He was great. And that was why he felt like shit.

“If he’s in the room, then so are you or your father. Or I’m chained to something. I can’t get to him; he’d have to get at me. So I don’t see why I’m the one that you threaten,” Luther murmured. It seemed like he’d finally made sense of Sam’s notes and now he was reading. Slowly—sometimes he mouthed a word to himself.

“Why haven’t you mentioned anything about that to Dad? Are you waiting to blackmail us into letting you go at the end?” Dean looked back at the paper in his hand and tried to remember what it was for. It came to him after a moment, and he kicked himself for getting so distracted. But there was so much to keep up in the air, and none of it could break.

Luther’s fingers tightened very slightly on the paper so it fluttered. He casually looked over his shoulder at the window, at the steadily brightening light that was filtering through the drawn curtains. The skin under his eyes was sagging and the shade of a bruise, with little veins clearly visible beneath the shadows. “I just lost a family and a mate, Dean. I’m not interested in involving myself in another one this soon after.” He glanced back at Dean, knowledge a low crescent glow in the backs of his eyes. “I want to see you kill this demon. And if it’s easier for you, you can believe it’s because otherwise, it’ll be free to come after me. I did trick it, after all.”

The bathroom door opened just then and Sam stepped out. His face was damp and the high angry color had disappeared from his cheeks, but he still was wary as he moved to collect his notes. “Dad called. He said he’d just go ahead and start on his share. I’m going out to do mine, and I guess you two can do yours when you wake up.”

“Great,” Dean muttered. He eyed the list in his hands, turning over all the names in his head, then abruptly got up and followed Sam to the door.

Sam kept going and only turned around once he’d gotten outside. He shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against some blow he was expecting, but the look in his eyes delivered a pretty good slap itself. “Ignoring what I can do isn’t working, Dean. If I really want to learn how to stop it, then first I better figure out what it is and how I can control it.”

“It’s not your fault, Sam. Mom and Jessica—” Dean started.

And Sam closed up, right there. He always did, and that wasn’t normal because Sam didn’t lock down like that. What Sam did was seethe, grinding his teeth, and be increasingly irritating because of that and finally explode, and maybe that was painful but at least it got it all out in the open where they could talk about it.

“I’m not going to hurt people with it. I’m going to make sure you don’t have to worry about that,” Sam finally said. Then he got in the car and slammed the door before Dean could reply.

The sun was strong enough to give Dean the creeps, but he watched Sam drive off anyway.

“That’s what I’m worried about.” He said it loud enough, but Luther didn’t rise to the bait. With a kick at the threshold, Dean turned around and went to take his goddamned _nap_. They were on the verge of finally destroying the demon, with their jury-rigged lives damn near giving out, and he was back in kindergarten. Amazing.

* * *

Sam came running in bare minutes after Dad had got in, catching Dean as he’d been preparing to take Luther out and making that completely unnecessary. And also giving Dean a brief moment of panic till Dean realized Sam had already had the vision and wasn’t in the middle of having any kind of explosive fit.

“So it’s the one. She’s the baby,” Sam breathlessly finished. The moment the words were out, he flopped backwards on the bed as if they’d took the last of his strength. He reeked of sweat and fear, like he’d just run a mile out of hell.

Dean walked over to the window, only half-listening as Dad quizzed Sam for more details—Dad had a strange fascination with the idea of visions and always wanted to know everything, just to make sure they weren’t still nightmares. Something to do with half-recalled memories of Sammy being afraid of the dark when they were younger, and Dean would have to ask about that sometime. When they were less busy.

The truck was parked straight, but the Impala next to it was crooked and less than an inch from double-parking. Long, thick black tire marks arced away from the back wheels.

“She’s going to be six months old exactly _tonight_ \--”

Someone’s phone rang and a network of thin chills instantly spread from the back of Dean’s neck downwards. “Don’t answer that,” he snapped, turning back around.

Dad gave him a weird look. Once Sam had struggled upright again, he did the same thing. Then he took out his phone, which was still ringing, and flipped it open. “Hello?”

Luther rummaged around in the papers on the table till he found a map. He sat down and spread it out, then began marking off places. He didn’t seem to be paying attention, but his head was cocked slightly towards Sam and his shoulders were stiff.

Dean couldn’t hear what was being said, but he could hear a little of the person on the other end of the line. It was a guy, and despite the static of the phone, the threatening tone was unmistakable.

Even if it hadn’t been, Dean would’ve known something was wrong from the way Sam glanced at Dad, like he was thinking of just hanging up. Instead he held the phone up so it was a little short of being within Dad’s reach. “It’s for you.”

Frowning, Dad took the half-step forward needed to grab the phone and put it up to his ear. “Hello?”

That voice had been familiar, but right now Dean couldn’t quite remember from where. He let the curtains drop back and rounded the first bed.

“Caleb!” Dad barked, head jerking up. His eyes stared angrily but distantly past Dean’s right shoulder, and his free hand tightened into a fist against his hip. “Hurt him and I’ll—”

Dean was close enough now to hear the wet gurgle turn to a hard, chilling rattle. He and Sam met eyes, and then they both looked up at their father, whose face had gone cold and hard; Dad pursed his lips, eyes narrowed in thought, and then took a deep breath.

“What do you want?”

* * *

Sam and Dad were still arguing, toe-to-toe and any moment now it was going to turn physical so Dean would have to get in there. Problem was, it was still daylight and despite his worry about his family, his horror and rage at Caleb’s and Pastor Jim’s deaths, Dean was helplessly, unavoidably sleepy. The nap from earlier would keep him from passing out completely, but it hadn’t done much for his ability to keep everything straight.

He forced himself to concentrate on things. Run a thought into the ground if he had to. The laptop he had before him flickered as the page finally loaded and Dean squinted at the screen, having to individually focus on each word in order to read it. “Who the hell was that guy on the phone? Is he the same one that came after you for the bullets?”

“…probably meant to draw us off so we can’t get at the demon here!”

“I know that, Sammy! But what—”

“What?” Luther had offered some advice at the beginning, but he’d basically sided with Dad and that hadn’t made Sam happy. He’d withdrawn himself from the discussion the moment Sam had snapped at him and just curled up on the other bed like a gigantic hound. Of course he’d have no problem dozing off, since he didn’t really give a shit. “Were you talking to me?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Hey, Dad, I found a pistol listing that might work.”

Dad turned too fast and looked at Dean too hard while his comprehension caught up with him. Then he gave Dean a tight, pointed smile. “Good. Got an address?”

“Sending an email to the store, too,” Dean said. He tapped the keys under the increasing awareness that Sam was giving him one of those _looks_ , and maybe getting Sam really angry wasn’t a great idea now, but Dean was getting tempted anyway. “Look, Sam, you have any brighter ideas? Because I don’t—hell, do I wish I did, but I don’t. We can’t let the demon go, and we can’t let it keep killing all our friends. Even Dracula here thinks it’s the best we can do.”

Sam’s breath came loud and harsh, like the snorting of a bull readying itself to charge. It made Dean tense and look up, one hand reaching to pull down the laptop screen just in case, but Sam held his ground. He stared back and forth, then abruptly flopped into the nearest chair. His jaw was still jutting, but the hard glint in his eyes was fading.

“Fine. I don’t like it, but—fine. But Dad, you should take someone with you. Someone that’ll watch your back,” Sam muttered. And from the way he raised his chin on that one, that was as much of a concession as he was going to make. “This isn’t about buying me and Dean time, all right? This is about getting you out of there, too.”

“Someone has to wait for the demon, and anyway, they’ll know if anyone else comes with me.” Dad had made a good point, in Dean’s opinion.

Sam, on the other hand, just had to disagree. “They don’t have to know. They—I could do something.”

Both Dad and Dean instinctively moved towards Sam; Dean was fully prepared to chain _Sam_ to the goddamn toilet if he kept on like that. After the close calls they’d had so far, there was no way Dean was letting Sam go charging off half-cocked. Even if they were behind the Colt, he was barely all right with letting Sam get in the same room with the demon.

“No,” Dad succinctly said.

“No,” Luther said, sitting up. He raised his eyebrows at the looks he got, taking it all with that unbreakable composure of his. But when his gaze settled down, it was on Sam. “I didn’t agree to this. You have no idea what you’re doing and if you make a mistake, it’s my neck on the line.”

At first Dean didn’t understand at all—neither did Dad, and maybe not even Sam, because Sam’s eyes first widened in surprise, then narrowed. Then Sam sat up straight and leaned forward. “It’s already your neck on the line. You get to live in exchange for helping us out. If Dad gets killed, then why should we keep holding up our end of the bargain?”

Dad got it right about then, and after a moment he nodded. “Is it possible? Could he keep them from noticing you? And could he do that in time—I have to leave as soon as possible.”

Luther opened his mouth, then abruptly shut it, looking defensive. He rolled his shoulders a few times as he matched glowers with Dad, but eventually he cracked. “It’s possible. But he’s inexperienced and if it goes _wrong_ \--” he took a breath, let it out in a raspy, hollow chuckle “—never mind. You wouldn’t care too much in that case. Fine.”

“Glad that’s settled. Dean?” John said, holding out his hand. He transferred his stare to Dean’s face and for one wild, irrational moment Dean thought the gaze was peeling back everything. But no, that twitch in Dad’s face was just annoyance. “Dean? You have any more objections?”

_Dean, are you going to waste even more time? Make me ask hard questions you don’t really want to answer now?_ Well, he didn’t want to but he didn’t want Sam to do this, either. And he didn’t want Dad to go in alone and it all warred in him for a second longer before Dean reluctantly slid a scrap of paper with the address of the gun-store in it. Dad glanced at it, then turned and made for the door.

Nobody talked till the sound of the truck’s engine had faded away into nothing, and even then, it seemed like nobody wanted to break the silence. In all that time, Sam hadn’t stopped staring at Luther, and while Luther had laid back down, he’d still kept his eyes on Sam. And Dean was watching both of them, his hand itching for a machete.

“It’s probably not the same man. We know what he looks like—the demon in him would’ve jumped to someone new by now,” Luther finally said. “But you can hear the demon in the undertone. Same voice—same smell, too.”

“So you and Dean can tell if someone’s possessed.” Sam drummed his fingers on the table. His Adam’s apple bobbed once and his nostrils briefly flared with a long, sharp exhale. “Why’d you do that? Why’d you just fake out my dad like that?”

Luther rolled over onto his side, finally breaking eye-contact. He sounded relaxed enough—he seemed sure enough of himself, showing his back to Dean like that—but his body was tense, muscles drawn tight beneath his shirt. “Because your father’s right. You’re better off facing the demon than its followers.”

“Stop bringing my _father_ into this,” Sam snapped. He was still for one second. Then he was pawing through his notes, coming up with a crumpled sheet, and on his feet just as Dean was forcing his sluggish body to rise. “Dean, I’ve got to do some shopping. Hour, max. Then I’m back and we can take care of him.”

He jerked his head at Luther, but didn’t bother giving him a whole look. That got beneath Luther’s skin enough to spur an irritated jerk of the shoulders out of him. “You were faking him out right along with me,” he called after Sam.

The door slammed. Dean eyed the computer, watched his vision go blurry and then, after a sharp effort, clear again. He got up off the bed. “I’m taking a nap here. You—” fucking smartass monster “—can if you want, but you’re doing it in the bathroom.”

“Like I said, either I’m chaperoned or I’m chained up. I don’t know why you worry,” Luther said, and this time there was a definite trace of spite in his voice.

It made Dean feel absolutely fine about grabbing the bastard and dragging him over to the chains before he’d even gotten steady on his feet. At least he could do something about that.

But when Dean was back on the bed and stretched out with the monotonous ceiling and the sunlight outside to lull him to sleep, he…didn’t. He laid there and watched all his worries fly around him like circling vultures, and he never did close his eyes.


	2. Crossroads Night

Dean flipped the gun around, then held it up to the light. Where his skin touched the metal, he felt a slight frisson, but nothing like the harsh prickling he got when he held the Colt. “I don’t know, Dad. I’m still not getting a good feeling about this.”

“Nobody’s seen this gun that’s still alive except us. Sam killed the demon that had it before it could report back,” Dad said, taking back the pistol. He snapped out the bullet chamber and peered through the holes, then spun the rotor with his thumb. It whirred with surprisingly little grating, considering its age. “And we know that they haven’t seen the real bullets yet. I’ve got some silver ones made from melted-down Vatican silverware that should fool them for long enough.”

“We don’t know that for sure. Anyway, what if the _demon_ \--the big one—already saw it way back when?” Sam started to get up from where he was kneeling on the floor, then winced and paused. He put one hand back down and pressed his other hand against the small of his back, twisting slightly at the waist. He’d been marking up the floor for the better part of an hour, so hopefully he was nearly done. “You said people have taken this gun up against it before, didn’t you?”

That was to Luther, who’d gotten let out of the bathroom over Dean’s objections. Maybe it’d sound suspicious if they had to yell their questions at him, but he still thought better that than have the bastard out where he could needle at them. Things were already shitty enough.

“I don’t know what happened there,” Luther replied in a patient tone. He’d settled down on the floor across from Sam to help draw out the circle from Sam’s notes. He wasn’t making anyone really happy with that—especially Sam, who seemed more miffed that Luther had been able to make that much sense out of his research than because his reluctant act had fooled Dad into accepting an idea suggested by a vampire—but they had so little time that they couldn’t say no. “Something went wrong, obviously—there were supposed to be thirteen bullets made for the gun, and Elkins only had five with him. But I wasn’t there myself. What worries me more is whether or not Sam really killed the demon back at the barn.”

Dean sat down on the bed behind Luther hard enough to make the mattress creak. “Excuse me? You couldn’t have mentioned this before? Then how do we know it’s not spying on us right now?”

“Because they’re weak without a body to possess.” The ‘I already told you’ in Luther’s tone came through loud and clear, for all that he was still talking at the same low volume. “And it didn’t come after you or me right away, so it probably was hurt, at least.”

“I killed it,” Sam snapped. He drew the last line with a savage slashing motion, then sat back on his heels to study the circle.

After a long, uncomfortable moment, he finally looked up at them. His shoulders hunched back and he nervously flicked the chalk between his fingers, but his expression was good old-fashioned stone wall. The only harder, blanker thing around was Dad’s face, though his eyes as he studied Sam were worried enough for Dean to see it.

Sam shrugged. “I just…it’s like the visions, all right? I just know it’s dead. And you know, that’s a really good reason why I should—”

“We went over this, Sam. If you don’t know how you did something, then I’m not going to risk having you there and having it not work a second time.” Dad turned away to the dresser and began lighting candles. He paused to glance upwards, but Dean caught his attention and signaled: smoke alarm was already disabled. “And you _will_ use the _gun_ when you and Dean see it coming.”

God, Luther must be having a goddamn field day with this. Dean didn’t even want to look in that direction and see that son of a bitch’s smug face. Just thinking about it made things rotten.

Wait. That actually was something burning that Dean was smelling.

“But—” Sam started in a heated tone. Then he stopped and blew out the rest of his breath in one short, vicious burst. He was still twiddling his fingers, and a thin trail of smoke was issuing from the chalk he had. No one—scratch that, Luther had noticed and he was staring fixedly at Sam’s hand, so it didn’t look like help was coming from his corner any time soon. “Fine.”

“So why don’t we get started now?” Dean said. His voice was way too high and insistent, but frankly, he really didn’t care. He just wanted Sam to stop _that_ right now. He also wanted them to come up with a better solution, but at this point, pushing Dad more was just going to get him going off on his own when they weren’t looking. Better to keep him working with them, even if it wasn’t the best plan possible.

Sam and Dad turned to glare at him when he hadn’t even done a damn thing. Then Sam grunted to himself and started shuffling papers, while Dad went back to lighting candles. They’d actually listened to him, but it figured that when that had finally happened, Dean wouldn’t be in the slightest position to enjoy it.

* * *

Sam squinted at the sheets in his hand, mumbling to himself. “Okay, we didn’t have mandrake root, so Luther’s cover is only going to last till about an hour after they get there. Hopefully Dad works fast.”

The sun was nearly all the way down and the light was coming straight through the windshield, messing up Dean’s sight and making his skin crawl so badly he couldn’t even attempt to sit still. He wished he could repark the car, but thanks to the neighbors’ big hedges, this spot and direction was the only one with a good line of sight to the baby’s bedroom. “Am I the only one who’s disturbed about how casual you are about being Mr. Wicked Witch of the West?”

The sheets finally stopped rustling, but that wasn’t as much of a relief as Dean had been expecting. “I’m not casual about it,” Sam eventually said, teeth gritted. “I’m trying to deal. And don’t _goddamn_ start—just ignoring it’s not even remotely on the table anymore. I need to get control of it or I’m going to hurt someone I don’t want to and I don’t want that to happen again.”

Dean had a feeling they weren’t just talking about the moment when Sam had had Dad ten or twelve feet above the ground, and that both saddened and frustrated him. And mostly it made him even more pissed off than he already was. He’d always hated stakeouts, hated the waiting around while his nerves twanged, and this one had the highest stakes ever.

His hand was halfway to his cell before he even realized, and then it was only because he saw Sam’s eyes moving down. He slid his fingers out of his pocket and stuffed them beneath his thigh; a tired, knowing half-smile came and went on Sam’s face and for a moment, things were about as normal as they ever got. But then Sam turned away and stared up at the dark house. “Besides, I can use this to help us. Better than letting it help them.”

“We did okay before you went all Swiss Army knife,” Dean muttered.

“Yeah. Sure. Mom and Jess die, Dad spends his whole life on this demon, and we basically do the same thing.” That came out bitter and angry, but in the next second, Sam’s shoulders heaved up in a long, slow exhale as he turned away. He stared up at the house, his fingers occasionally drumming on the side of the window. “Hey, Dean? I’m sorry.”

After several moments, Dean decided he had no idea what Sam could possibly be talking about. Well, no—he had a lot of good ideas about what Sam’s apology could be for, but that was just in his opinion. Repentant Sam wasn’t something that anything in the last couple hours had pointed to, and no matter how Dean tried, he just couldn’t get into his brother’s head for this one. “About what?”

“About…about getting you into this mess,” Sam said.

Dean blinked. Then he leaned forward and grabbed Sam’s shoulder so Sam had to look at him. “Sammy, I know you didn’t just say sorry for everything that’s happened to me, up to and including this vampirism bullshit. Because who the hell died and made you the demon?”

Bad choice of wording. Wincing, Sam jerked his shoulder free and slid closer to the window a couple inches. “I didn’t mean it that way. But I—”

“Have been a real pain in the ass sometimes over the last year, so if you’re apologizing for that, I’ll definitely take it, and about damn time. But if it’s for the vampirism, or—or for Mom, God help us, or anything like that, then I don’t care if the demon shows up right now. We’re stepping out of this car and I am beating some sense into your head,” Dean hissed. He’d started to bark it, but a late-night jogger suddenly rounded the corner and led to them both hurriedly squishing down in the seats. “You didn’t do any of that. I should’ve known better than to check out the stupid graveyard by myself, and—and hell, this demon’s been around at least two hundred years. You gonna say you’re responsible for all that?”

“No. That’s not what I meant.” Sam obviously was going to continue, but cut himself off. His breath grated through his teeth, and he did his whole glare-in-the-other-direction routine again, as if intimidating nothing was going to make him more convincing. “I—Dean?”

A second away from shoving his mouth up to Sam’s neck vein, Dean jerked himself away. He hit the door on his side, flinched, and sank down into the seat cushions. After a moment, he ground his heel into the floor as hard as he could since he couldn’t risk enough noise to kick anything. “Don’t ask me if I need to eat. I ate, goddamn it. I’m just a little edgy.”

Sam didn’t say anything. The jogger, whoever they were, apparently kept on going because nobody came tapping on the window with questions, and the lights in the house gradually blinked off, one by one. Now it looked like things were down to somebody in the living room, and somebody in the upstairs.

“I wish we were backing up Dad,” Dean muttered.

What little light there was glinted off the teeth in Sam’s wry half-smile, making it look artificially less dark. “I wish he was here backing us up.”

Yeah. Yeah to both.

* * *

The thing dissolved and Dean saw a hole splinter into life in the far wall, and a great, violently bitter snarl of disappointment surged up in him. It was all instinct, though—with the fire roaring up around them and the high screaming of the overheated air, he couldn’t stop to think on it. He just grabbed Sam and dragged his idiot brother out of the room and down the stairs and out onto the lawn. And then he turned around, and then they both saw that shadowy, taunting figure rise up again.

“No!” Sam shouted. He lunged forward, and the sheer stupidity of it almost froze Dean in place.

Luckily, it was ‘almost’ and he managed to tackle Sam to the ground before his brother had gotten more than a foot away. The gun skidded away on the damp grass as Sam’s hip smashed into Dean’s belly; Dean let his grip slip down from Sam’s shoulder to arm and yanked hard. A little too hard—he felt Sam’s muscles seize up and hastily loosened his hold before he popped out the joint. “Sor—”

Sam gasped in pain and twisted at the same time, nearly throwing Dean off. “Let me go! I’ve got to kill it! Dean, let me go!”

“You’ll die if you go back in there!” Well, to hell with apologies. Right now, Dean’s major concern was making Sam stay where he was by any means necessary. Injuries would heal. “You can’t—you already tried once!”

“Maybe I missed!” An elbow came flying at Dean’s nose and barely missed it. It was shortly followed by Sam’s snarling face as he wrestled himself around, trying to get purchase to shove at Dean’s chest. When Dean let body weight and gravity do their thing, Sam produced the kind of animalistic sound that should’ve went out with the Stone Age. His hands clawed at Dean’s back, and one abruptly went up to jerk back Dean by the hair. “Goddamn you, Dean, _I can get through that_.”

The look on Sam’s face right then made Dean’s mouth dry out, because it was much, much too cold.

Then Sam jerked up his head to stare—a fiery bit of wood landed nearby so yellow light skidded over his eyes—and he went abruptly slack beneath Dean. A quick glance upwards showed Dean an empty window, and as bad a setback as that was, he was actually glad towards the demon for it. It meant Sam would stop fighting him, at least right now. “Come on, Sam,” Dean urgently said, pulling at Sam’s shoulder. “Come on. We’ve got to go. Dad—Dad, remember?”

“Dad,” Sam repeated, sounding as if he wasn’t quite sure of the meaning of the word. He shook himself, then looked back at Dean. “Dad. Right.”

* * *

One concession Dad had allowed: he’d let them check out of the motel and pack up so as soon as they were done in Salvation, they could hit the road on his trail. Dean had hit the accelerator big-time the moment they’d gotten on the highway and hadn’t let up since.

“You should’ve let me go in there and end it,” Sam suddenly said. First thing he’d said for the past hour, and it figured it’d be getting up in Dean’s face.

“All right, you’ve got to use your—these powers of yours a little bit. But forgive me if I’m not that enthusiastic about letting you experiment by walking into a burning house!” Well, so much for keeping his temper. Dean made himself take a deep breath and sit back in his seat. “You know, you know…how much do you really know? God—Sam, at least tell me it’s mostly coming from your research, and you’re not just pulling it out of your ass.”

Sam slouched with a moody expression on his face. He worked his hands around each other, staring at his twisting fingers.

Dean tried to not think about thumping his head against the steering wheel. After all, it wasn’t his brain that needed it. “How do you know it’s not the demon making you think that stuff? If it is targeting you, then wouldn’t it be just great if you came running at it?”

“It’s not making me do things,” Sam muttered. “Not yet, anyway. Actually, it’d be so much better if you could just blame the demon for everything, wouldn’t it?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dean snapped, glancing over. Then he looked again.

Sam stared back. After a long second, he shifted so he was more turned towards Dean and lifted his hands, cupping one around the other’s fingers. He tipped his head and flicked his index finger so the flame on its tip went out, then flicked it again. Nothing happened. Frowning, Sam stared at his finger till the vein in his temple started to pop, and a sluggish, smaller flame came back.

“That fire started from the baby’s crib.” He told it to the night outside in a dull, disturbingly lifeless voice. But before Dean could reach over and hit him, a confused light came into Sam’s eyes. Better than none, anyway. “But—with Jessica, it started with her.”

“For the last time, you didn’t kill anyone. And don’t do that when I’m driving. Jesus.” Dean turned his attention back to driving just in time to pull the car back into the proper lane. It was a good thing they were the only people on this damn road.

“No, I have. I just realized, you know…if the demons work by possessing people, then I did kill Meg. And the demon in her.” The flame went out, hopefully for good, and Sam moved around again so he could tap his fingers against the window. He unthinkingly bit his lip, and deep enough for the smell of blood to get to Dean, but Dean couldn’t bring himself to call Sam on that. “The scary thing is, I’m not sure I care. And we don’t know if Meg asked for it, or if it just happened to her.”

The scary thing was, Dean wasn’t sure anymore which would be better: if Sam cared or if he didn’t. He didn’t know which would make for a better hunter to kill that goddamned demon, or which would make for a Sam where he wasn’t scared shitless that his brother wouldn’t lose it before it all ended.

He did know one thing: this demon never had been worth Sam, or Dad. And now he was beginning to see that a dead demon and a living family might not necessarily go hand-in-hand when it came to possible solutions of their situation. It was funny—funny and galling and pretty sick to boot, but Dean was starting to see the virtue of Luther’s run-and-hide philosophy. “You know what I don’t care about? I don’t care if the demon dies if you or Dad die too. Where’s the victory in that?”

That sure as hell got Sam’s attention. He glanced sharply at Dean. “But—”

“I’m calling Dad—”

The cell phone rang just as Dean’s fingers touched it. His blood went icy and he locked eyes with Sam, who’d gone just as stiff as he had. He slowly took the phone out, noted that it was Dad’s number and flipped it open so fast he clipped his ear. “Dad?”

*Hello, Dean.* Male voice. Slightly different than the ones he’d heard before, but Luther had been telling the truth about that: they did all have the same unsettling undertone. *You’re never going to see your father again.*

“You goddamn—” But they hung up, and Dean was still driving so he couldn’t do anything but sit on his fear and fury. Sit and seethe while his insides churned and floor the damn accelerator. “They’ve got him.”

Sam grabbed the handle above the door as much so he could slew himself around as so he could keep from slamming into the dashboard. “What? How—”

The phone rang. They stared at each other through its second ring, and then Sam scrambled to get his cell phone out. “Hello? Who the hell is this?” he said harshly.

*…Luther. Listen--*

“How’d you get my number?” Sam asked, blinking rapidly.

Luther’s irritated sigh was interrupted by a short, nasty-sounding bout of coughing. *Sam, this is a pay-phone and I have three minutes. Maybe. Your spell held up and if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to run from these things, but that’s if I don’t stay still. Do you want to save your father or not?*

“What happened?” Sam and Dean said at the same time.

*It’s got him.* Another cough got hold of Luther, and this one sounded wet, like he was near to choking on liquid. He spat out an address and then hung up, though Sam yelled at the phone for a couple more seconds.

Sam finally put away the phone and threw himself back in his seat. He stared outside, then twisted around to face Dean. Then he twisted back, looking as if he wished he could punch the dashboard.

“I’ll kill him if it turns out he got Dad caught,” Dean finally growled.

“Got to get there first and find him.” After some more restless turning about, Sam reached into the backseat and came up with a fistful of papers, some of which flopped over to show strange squiggly symbols and sketches of monsters. He shot a look at Dean that was half-challenging, half-pleading, but Dean wasn’t about to say anything. There wasn’t time for it. “Can you go any faster?”

Dean pressed his teeth together, pushing back some thoughts and pulling forward others. He went back and forth on a few, then made up his mind. First and foremost was making sure everyone lived. “There anything in there about keeping cops from spotting us?”

Sam frowned and rapidly flipped through his notes. Dean went faster.

* * *

The address Luther had given them belonged to a crappy shack of a church on the outskirts of town, but the ground around it gave Dean a funny vibe. He didn’t normally get anything off most “holy” places, so he asked Sam and got a mutter about a crawling feeling, so it wasn’t just nerves. Not that it, or the fact that the sun was an hour over the horizon, really mattered.

There was no sign of Luther inside the church, and the old man inside who apparently kept up the place seemed so eager to chat them up that Dean doubted if anyone had been around for decades. They moved out from it in a spiral pattern and soon came across an abandoned car with Luther’s smell on it. It looked pretty nice, but when Dean checked, the ignition had been hotwired. He swiped a hand over the black leather and it came away with streaks of dried blood.

“Dean.” Sam had wandered away to a small dirt lot behind the place, which probably had been the parking lot. It now appeared to be the neighborhood junkyard, but a few patches of clear dirt still remained. He was standing at the edge of one of them, staring down at the ground.

When Dean came over, he noted that it looked as if someone had been doing some digging. Not a lot—on the level of a big dog, but Luther’s smell was thick over the area, and when Dean looked for it, he found more bloodstains on nearby piles of trash. He came back over to the dirt patch and squatted down at the edge of it, sniffing. “He didn’t leave here, I don’t think.”

“No…” Sam slowly knelt down beside Dean and poked around at the dirt. His fingers easily penetrated the loose, softened earth. He abruptly sucked in his breath and put one hand on Dean’s shoulder. “I’m going to—try something. Been trying to work on this the most…”

He glanced at Dean as if he were expecting an objection, and one did rise in Dean’s throat, but he swallowed it and nodded. After another moment, Sam turned back to the ground. He resettled himself, staring hard at the dirt. His hand slowly tightened on Dean and sweat started to drip down the side of his face, which was going pale. Once or twice he winced and his other hand jerked towards his head, but he always made it go back down. Then he suddenly jerked forward; Dean grabbed him back, afraid Sam was having another attack, and thus narrowly saved them from getting facefuls of soil. It still smacked into their chests and got in their hair.

When it all settled down again, they were looking down into a shallow trench, which had a body curled in it in fetal position. It was so crusted with dirt that sight-wise, it was impossible to identify who it was. “Well, it smells like him,” Dean uncertainly said. “So I guess he takes the whole go-to-ground thing seriously?”

“You think we can move him?” Moving slowly, Sam pushed himself back up. He grimaced and pressed his hand to the side of his head. “Just you, that is…that wiped me out.”

Dean braced himself and leaned down into the hole. He put out a hand and carefully prodded one of the thicker clumps of earth stuck to Luther. Part of it fell away to reveal raw red flesh, and Luther moved a fraction of an inch. Away from Dean. “Well, we’ll have to. Can’t exactly question him like this, can we?”

* * *

A motel seemed out of the question, both because of what they might end up having to do and because the demon would probably be looking there first. It stuck in Dean’s craw to waste even more time, but the safe choice seemed to be knocking on the door of a friend of Dad’s who lived in a neighboring town. At least, Bobby used to be a friend of Dad’s.

Bobby let them in. Came pretty close to beheading Luther when Sam was halfway through explaining things, but in the end, just left them to it in the garage, mumbling something about going to restock while he had the chance.

Sam dosed himself up with aspirin while Dean washed Luther down with a garden hose and figured out what they were dealing with. Luther’s injuries seemed to argue against him working with the demon—they were almost as bad as when Dean and Sam had first met him—but Dean chained up Luther’s feet just in case.

Dean was starting to lose his fight against the midday sleepiness by the time Sam came back in, which was good timing on Sam’s part since Luther had just woken up.

“They built the church over Indian holy ground. Doesn’t do a damn thing to stop a demon as big-league as this one, but the different consecrations on the place can confuse it sometimes.” Luther painfully rolled over. He paused to stare down at his rattling ankles, shot a tired look at Dean, and kept on going till he’d gotten onto his back. “Works better than the trick your father tried to pull. They caught on faster than he was expecting.”

“Where is he?” Dean demanded. He glanced over his shoulder long enough to see Sam leaning against a table behind and to the left, then turned back to bend down to Luther. “Why didn’t the demon get you?”

The effort of turning over left Luther breathing hard for nearly a minute. He stared up at the ceiling, but it was obvious he wasn’t really seeing it. He probably was a hair away from passing out again, but Dean couldn’t work up any sympathy. “I think they took him to an apartment complex. Sunrise Apartments…they looked like they were pulling in there.”

“Looked like?” Sam pushed off the table and came forward till he was abreast of Dean.

When he came up, Luther turned his head to look at him. “I had to run again at that point,” he said. Put a hell of a lot of acid into his voice. “And it did get me—it just happened that it could either get your dad or me at that point, and when it figured out that your dad didn’t have a problem leaving me, it dropped me and went after him instead. By the time it came back for me, I’d left.”

“So much for sucking up to us. Didn’t want to try being a hero?” Dean snorted.

Luther’s eyes flicked over, and his lip faintly curled. “No, Dean. I didn’t. The moment I could, I got out of the way and I watched it grab your dad and rip him up. Given a…given a choice, he’d kill me too, so why should I get into that?”

“You goddamn son of a—” Dean bolted up and was about two inches from figuring out if he could decapitate Luther with his bare hands when Sam pulled him back. And even then, it was a close call for a few seconds. “You _bastard_. So why’d you call? Huh? Because the demon made you an offer?”

“Right, it told me I’d get off if I contacted you and talked you into going after your dad right into what anyone could tell you is a trap. Sit down and don’t be stupid, damn it. It’s older than you or me, and it’s been watching you for your whole life,” Luther snapped. “It knows you don’t care. You’ll walk in anyway as long as your dad’s still alive, and so he is. And so it’d be pointless to use me like that.”

The fucking son of a bitch. But he was right. He was right, and Dean sat back down and stared at his hands. “But we have to,” he finally said. “We have to get Dad back.”


	3. The Thickness of Blood

They had to break off the questioning session around one in the afternoon due to Dean’s increasing sleepiness. Sheer willpower had kept him awake about a half-hour longer than usual, but it clearly wasn’t going to last and even he could see he needed to save his energy for other things. Anyway, it’d also been pretty obvious that Luther had run out of information around eleven, but Dean had kept up the interrogation for longer mostly because it gave him something to do right away. At least, that was Sam’s theory.

He went back into the house to flop down on Bobby’s couch, saying he’d be up again in a couple hours. Sam stayed around: aside from the need to keep watch on Luther, Bobby used the garage as storage for some pretty interesting stuff. In particular, Sam had found a volume on magic circles that all the hardcore online sources he’d been looking at referenced but claimed no longer existed. It had three chapters on circles for trapping demons, and for once, the diagrams felt “right” to him.

“You people really love the chains, don’t you?” came a rasp from the corner. Luther had been getting steadily paler, though they’d dressed his wounds as well as they could, and probably better than he really deserved. Or was worth. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The book was nearly two feet tall and heavy as a sack of bricks. It was making Sam’s knees sore, but none of the available table space was big enough to take it.

“Neither should you. You know that’s why your dad wasn’t killed right away, don’t you?”

There was enough room for Sam to prop his feet up on a bookshelf, so he did and then laid the book over his legs. The pages got flipped around a bit in the process, so he had to spend a couple seconds finding where he’d left off. “Look, you’re two hundred years old and all that, but we’re not leaving our dad. If we don’t go soon, who’s to say the demon won’t kill him anyway?”

“Nothing.” It felt like Luther was staring, but Sam wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of acknowledgment. After a moment, Luther shifted and sighed. “Do you at least know what you’re going to do once you get there?”

“I’m thinking. I’m thinking, all right? But if your father was—why am I talking to you? You _left_ him!” Sam lifted his hands from the book a fraction of a second before he would’ve ripped a page.

He sniffed the air, then slapped one hand over his eyes and quietly, furiously thought to himself that nothing was burning. _Nothing_ was burning.

When he took his hand off his eyes, nothing was burning, though the faint smell of charred wood lingered in the air. It used to be that his powers had the decency, however annoying, to go weeks before appearances, but now it seemed like once one did pop out, it persisted till Sam either screwed up or got control of it.

“Why the hell would I go back for him? I wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing anyway and I’m not so stupid as to think that’d make him think any better of me.” Luther started out surprisingly angry, but soon tapered off into an exhausted wheeze. He was staring morosely at the ceiling when Sam looked up; for once, he didn’t seem to be trying to pull on a mask.

Well, he did look terrible. His skin was so papery it was a wonder the bones jutting from beneath weren’t tearing it. Maybe Sam didn’t have Dean’s incredible nose, but by now even he could smell rot, and it was getting stronger by the moment. Bleeding out technically shouldn’t kill Luther, but Sam did have to wonder about that a bit as he watched him. “Why’d you even come back? You could’ve just mailed the bullets to us.”

“Would’ve made more sense,” Luther agreed. He snorted, then laughed shortly, the corners of his mouth twisting in pain. “I haven’t been this stupid in a very, very long time. I forgot how much it hurts.”

Sam glanced back towards the house. He wasn’t really sure why, since he soon realized he hadn’t actually heard any sound from that direction and shouldn’t have been expecting to, anyway: Bobby was out at his day job and Dean still had an hour to go before he woke up. Shrugging to himself, he hefted the book to the side. It didn’t fit the space—why it’d been on his legs in the first place, duh—so he dumped it on the floor, then got down beside it. He had brutal cramps in both legs and did his best to slowly stretch them out. Got the machete down to lie on the floor behind him while he was at it as well.

He was just sitting back when Luther slowly turned to look at him. It made Sam stiffen up, though like when he’d been checking behind him, he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t exactly like how Dean got when he’d been starving himself too long, but it was along the same lines, he decided. “You said you—I mean, vampires can tell when someone’s possessed, right?”

Luther blinked, needed an obvious second to get his mind back to the conversation. His eyelids stayed half-down, and from moment to moment they connoted exhaustion and enticement. Then, oddly enough, he flinched and tried to twist around so Sam couldn’t see his face—or he couldn’t see Sam’s. He was too weak and ended up falling back. “I did, yeah. We can. Dean can, that is, since I can’t concentrate on anything right n—your dad’s probably going to have one of them in him at this point.”

“And you guessed there’s about two plus the big demon?” Sam asked. They still had four bullets. But they needed to be careful, to save those up till they figured out what the hell had gone wrong back in the house fire. Anyway, if the demon was expecting them to go for Dad, then they’d have to get away with him. For a while, at least.

“Yeah.” When Luther’s eyes were focused, they rested their gaze on Sam’s neck. The first time maybe had been out of politeness, or a last-ditch attempt to keep looking like he wasn’t a monster, but now Luther wasn’t bothering to hide the fixation. “Are you thinking of exorcising your dad?”

Sam put his hands down on the floor. The cement was cold and gritty, so it’d let him know if any vampiric magnetism started pulling him over. Plus the balls of his feet were starting to hurt. “Pretty much. There’s this circle in that book—” he nodded at it “—called a trap for devils. I think it’d hold him long enough. And no matter how big and strong this demon is, it’s still a demon. Still got to play by some rules.”

“Demons are chaos,” Luther said, careful to shape each syllable. He narrowed his eyes. His hands curled, then twisted to flatten against the floor so he could push himself over onto his back. “Are you just running this plan by me like I’m some proofreader?”

After another moment’s thought, Sam decided this was the best he could do. “I don’t know what exorcism to use yet. I want it out of Dad, but I don’t want Dad hurt, and I know when you’re exorcising a demon, it can do a lot right up to the moment it’s out.”

He and Luther eyed each other for a good minute while the time pulled out in a long thrumming whine.

“Hurt more than he already has been,” Sam corrected himself. He shifted up onto one knee and draped his arm over it so his wrist hung where Luther could see it. And Luther’s eyes did go to the bare skin. “He’s going to take a while to heal, from what you said, and I believed that part. So there’s him, and there’s Dean’s…problem, and the demon to worry about on top of that. It’s a lot for anybody to watch out for.”

Luther cocked his head, hard mocking glints showing from beneath his half-lidded eyes. “Do you want me to ask for your blood yet, or is there anything else you’re going to list as part of its price?”

“No. I’m not even sure you can do what I already have talked about, and I’m not going to cut myself up for a waste of time.” Sam caught the slight movement and incredulously laughed beneath his breath. “Don’t tell me you thought you’d get to bite. I’m barely okay with Dean doing that, and he’s my brother.”

“Nice of you to bring Dean up,” Luther muttered. He abruptly lost a lot of his enthusiasm, most of which Sam hadn’t really noticed till it disappeared. His head dropped back and he started looking anywhere but Sam. “He’ll notice, believe me. Even if you’re just breaking open an old scab to do it.”

From the way Dean had been acting, he seemed to think Sam had already sneaked Luther a couple pints, so that wouldn’t be anything new. It wouldn’t be anything helpful when it came to Dean’s temper either, but Sam was concentrating on what would get them out of here and after the demon and Dad. And he needed help and Dean wasn’t going to be enough, he’d reluctantly concluded. For one, he no longer knew if Dean would stand and see the deal through, and maybe Sam’s option on a normal life was getting closer and closer to permanent expiration, but no matter what, he wasn’t going to live his damn life on the run from the demon.

He’d _left_ home, he snapped at the tiny comment his inner-Dean voice made. Left and hadn’t made it that hard for Dad or Dean to find him again—it wasn’t the same.

“Sam?” Luther’s gaze had finally settled on Sam’s other hand, which was still resting on the floor. “Why are you even thinking about this?”

“Because I want another shot at that demon, and I want it to be the last one anyone ever has to take at it. I thought you did, too,” Sam said, frowning. As bad as Luther looked, he should’ve been trying to jump Sam by this point. At least, judging by how Dean got when he’d gone too long between feeds, and Dean had more reason to hold back. “Isn’t that why you came back? You’re too smart not to know you can’t keep running that long.”

A laugh croaked out of Luther’s throat, rattling him. He kept on shaking so Sam reflexively moved back a little; he was having to make an effort at restraining himself and it was finally starting to show. “You know, I think the idea at first was to point you in the right direction, then hope your brother lost his temper and whacked off my head.”

“Well, biting me’s a pretty good way of making sure he does.” Sam checked his watch—thirty minutes till Dean woke up, and Dean probably was going to jump the gun on that. He studied Luther again, but though Luther was clearly struggling, he just as clearly wasn’t going to lose his grip on himself soon enough.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to let me do that.” Every word was licked soft out of Luther’s mouth, but landed like a sharp nail being pounded into the ground. He wasn’t being wistful, though his sarcasm couldn’t completely wipe out the trace of craving in his tone.

“I thought you said you weren’t the suicidal type. What happened to being used to living?” Sam snapped back. He got back on his feet, but stayed crouching while he pulled up his sleeve. 

The arm really wasn’t the ideal spot given the kind of fighting they probably had coming up, but Sam sure as hell wasn’t letting Luther near his shoulder or neck—the other two places from which he’d had to get used to giving blood. Besides, he’d made Dean eat just before Dean had gone in, and when Sam tugged off the bandage over his wrist, that scab hadn’t had the time to lose its moist look.

The moment the wrap came off, Luther jerked. Two ways at once, apparently, because overall he didn’t move. His nostrils flared and the tendons of his neck stood out beneath the skin when he swallowed. His eyes kept darting between the cut and Sam’s face, though once Sam had cracked the scab’s edge with his thumbnail, Luther stared only at that. “You’re going to regret this,” he gritted out, scratching at the floor.

“Not if it means no more demon in my life,” Sam replied, equally as hard.

Luther’s eyes flicked up to meet his. Then Sam started to lift his arm and Luther flung himself sideways; the chains swung out to hit some stacked paint-cans and clanged horrendously. Sam instinctively made a grab for him, then cursed and scrambled back so Luther only got hold of one arm. He twisted as chapped lips rasped over his bicep, inches from the cut, and threw out his free hand: there was a harsh scraping sound as the machete came towards him, and then the handle smacked into his palm.

The fingers clamped around Sam’s wrist ground hard around the bones, forcing him forward so Luther’s teeth scraped over his knuckles. Too far—Sam shoved his arm up against Luther’s mouth and swung around the machete in the same instant. He had the blade between them and against Luther’s belly just as one canine ripped the side of the cut open. By the time Sam worked the machete up to be at Luther’s throat, Luther was already drinking, and so ravenously that Sam didn’t feel a single drop of heat: no blood trickled away from Luther’s cold, cold mouth.

It didn’t hurt as much as Sam had come to expect; after opening up the cut, Luther just seemed to be lapping up the blood, something like a cat drinking water, while Dean’s way involved more teeth. Surprising, since from this close, it was clear Luther’s version of vampirism came with a scarier set of dental issues. And there wasn’t…anything else going on, either. At least, not from Luther’s side; with Dean, Sam sometimes got a weird spill-over of the high feeding gave Dean, but he wasn’t getting a thing from Luther except increasing dizziness. And Luther might have a death-grip on Sam’s arm, but he wasn’t…things were more carnivorous than carnal.

Now there was a line Sam’s Intro to English Composition professor would’ve loved. Luther needed to finish soon or Sam’s coping mechanisms were going to run out of inane observations to make.

His lips and hands had gotten warmer, almost like touching a regular person. His skin had lost its waxen quality as well, and he wasn’t drinking as feverishly now. The grip he had on Sam’s elbow and wrist had loosened slightly, and Luther had also started to move his head and shoulders back and forth…bobbing in time with Sam’s pulse, Sam abruptly realized. So that was probably good; Sam pressed hard with the machete and opened his mouth.

Before he could say anything, Luther dropped his arm and swayed back. Eyes gone almost completely black, as if the pupils had bled over the whites, stared dazedly at Sam. They and the blood smeared over Luther’s mouth provided the only color, and it was shockingly vivid. Luther cocked his head in a curiously unselfconscious way, then slowly swung forward again so his violently red mouth nearly blotted out the whole of Sam’s vision.

Sam’s scramble backward choked off his own exclamation. He didn’t quite know what was going on for a moment. And then he did, and he brought up the machete so fast that Luther lost an inch or so of hair to it. Luther froze in place. His eyes were back to normal and both stunned and wary, so apparently he was back with the program, too.

“What was—” This time, Sam consciously stopped himself. Even if he thought he’d get a straight answer, he didn’t have the time or the spare energy to deal with it. He duck-walked backward a few feet, then paused to awkwardly sling the bandage back around his wrist. “Jesus Christ. Jesus goddamn Christ.” He took a breath. “Can you…can you walk now?”

One blink and Luther was shuttered up again. He was so good at that Sam had to admit to envy of it. “If you took off the chains. Dean’s awake, by the way. He just walked out the front door, and he’s headed this way.”

“Great,” Sam muttered, glancing over his shoulder like Dean was already there. He started to put down the machete, thought twice about that, and then thought a third time and dropped it. The chain wouldn’t let Luther get far enough now, and Sam couldn’t bind up his arm properly with only one hand. “Great. All right. Still need to work on the exorcism part. Do you know anything about that?”

Sam sounded shaky as hell, but for once Luther didn’t look like he was taking copious notes on it in his head. Actually, Luther was wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand and looking like he wanted to hit something.

“Get rid of that,” Sam hissed.

Luther twitched, then jerked up his head. He licked his knuckles clean, but he did it while shooting Sam a contemptuous look. “He can probably smell it from outside, Sam. And yeah, I know some. Your friend’s books probably know more, but I can’t see all of them from here.”

“Sam?” came Dean’s call. Right on cue, all suppressed fury and fear. “Sam, are you all right? Did that blood-sucking son of a bitch pull something?”

After a moment, Sam pulled himself together and rose, turning as he did. He caught a glimpse of Luther glancing away at the ground, like he was the one who’d just made a deal with the devil.

“I’m fine. And I’ve got a plan to get Dad back,” Sam replied.

* * *

Dean loved his brother. Would do anything for him—literally anything. But Jesus, sometimes Sam didn’t have the sense God gave chickens. _Chickens_ at least weren’t so stupid they’d run up to a goddamn coyote and then lie down. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

“If I was, then according to you we’d really have something to worry about,” Sam snapped.

Well, he always knew how to send the moment into awkward silence. A flash of regret crossed Sam’s face, but in the next moment, his chin was up and his eyes weren’t wavering.

It’d taken less time than usual for him to get to that point, and Dean belatedly realized that Sam’s patience must have been temporarily worn out by his arguing with Dad. That was a problem, since Sam never could get talked round by anything once he’d ended up on the other side of that line, and the very, very last thing Dean needed was another blow-up like what had led to Sam leaving home. And it was a problem because the second Sam moved away from the door, Dean would be inside the garage and introducing Luther’s neck to the nearest sharp blade, and that wasn’t really a matter for discussion, either. Dean was trying really, really hard to at least keep it to acting like a pissed-off human being, but right now he wanted Luther dead so badly he could roll the juices around his mouth.

“Look, we need to do two things: get Dad, and get the demon. We’re probably going to get both at once, and while I’d like to think that’d make a nice two-in-one package, I don’t think it’s going to turn out that way.” Sam half-turned, hands going up to run through his hair, but in the next second, he’d moved back to block the door again. He shot a hard look at Dean. “Are you upset because he could’ve hurt me or just because he got blood from me?”

“‘Just’? ‘ _Just_ ’? Sam, he’s a vampire! We’re supposed to kill him!” Dean snarled, throwing up his hands.

And Sam actually started to roll his eyes. “Yeah, we’ve really been working hard on that. For Christ’s sake, Dean—” Any trace of flippancy dropped out of Sam as he abruptly glanced at his feet. He coughed, cleared his throat, then stepped forward. When he spoke again, his voice was so low it almost got lost in the breeze. “Dean, at this point I could probably handle him without the chains. Maybe you don’t want to think about that, but I could. Give me another bad headache, but…anyway, Dad’s going to be really hurt, and we’ll have to worry about keeping the demon at bay, too.”

“Yeah, I know.” Even if it did come from Luther’s mouth—and man, did this ever prove Dean wasn’t just paranoid—it would be a trap they’d be walking into, and the demon probably would be in Dad. “But I don’t understand why—”

“It can’t just be me and you because Dad’s going to be bleeding and I have to sleep sometime!” Sam froze, his face still twisted up in angry frustration. Then he exhaled sharply and jerked his head down. It came up a moment too late, looking sorry as hell; Sam reached out and while Dean didn’t exactly flinch, he didn’t give any encouragement either. “Goddamn it. Well, that was a bad way to say it, but it’s true, Dean. You have a hard time around me, and I know what to look for. We never really told Dad about that. And chaining you up’s not going to work, since God knows when the demon might try to pull something.”

Dean swallowed hard, and then swallowed again. He looked down at his hands to see that they’d gone to fists. A sniff told him his nails were drawing blood in places. “That was a pretty shitty way to say it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry.” That came out lame, so it was a good thing Sam flinched at himself. After a long few seconds, he glanced up at Dean. “I’ll let you kick my ass later?”

Him and his goddamn puppy-eyes. In spite of everything, the side of Dean’s mouth curled. “ _Let_ me, hell. I can kick your ass without you _letting_ me. This doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed off at you, though. And what makes you think that Luther’s that trustworthy?”

For a moment, Sam looked confused. Then he stared incredulously at Dean. “I didn’t mean he’d—nurse Dad, or anything like that. Dean, _Dad_ would kill Luther first chance he got, and the demon wouldn’t have any reason to keep him from doing it. But Luther has to be there to do some things so we can take care of Dad.”

And watch over each other, was the unspoken end of that sentence. It cut pretty deep, and especially because Sam was standing there with a blood-spotted bandage on his wrist as proof of how well Dean had been doing at that lately. Sour rage started to rise in Dean’s throat again as he thought about that again. “You could’ve woken me up and we could’ve…”

“…gotten a substitute? Like we have the time for it, and I’m not even going to get into how wrong that’d be anyway. Look, I’m okay. I didn’t let him take a whole lot and I’ll be fine as soon as I drink some water. I just gave him enough so he wouldn’t go comatose on us right now, and I definitely don’t plan on giving him any more,” Sam said. He stared hard at Dean, seeing something that made his expression turn startled and irritated. “Well, what other option was there? I mean real options.”

“Sam—it’s not just about getting him on his feet, all right? It’s—fine, it is because that son of a bitch managed to get blood out of you,” Dean started.

His throat tightened up too much for him to speak before Sam cut him off. “Dean. I _gave_ it to him. Is this some weird vampire thing I should know about? You’ve been so cranky about him anyway, and let’s not even get into what happens when you take him out to feed.”

“What happens when—Sam, would you just listen to me? This is not like donating to the Red Cross! This is letting him taste you—your blood, and—and you don’t taste the same as everyone else,” Dean reluctantly finished. He hated thinking about this part, ignored it whenever possible, and the effort of just acknowledging it drained all the energy from him. “No, I haven’t been biting anyone. But I’ve gotten a couple stray splashes, and it’s not anything like the same.”

The disbelief in Sam’s face was turning as appalled as Dean felt inside. “What? Are you saying I’m some kind of vamp catnip?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. It might just be the whole psychic powers thing. You smell like it, too. I thought maybe…it was just that we’re brothers, but with the way that asshole watches you, it’s not.” Dean took a deep breath and stared up at the sky, for once not caring how much the sun made his nerves crawl. There was so much to be afraid of—so much more than he’d ever could have predicted—and so little time. “Goddamn it. Well, you can’t take it back now. Just watch it around him, all right?”

“I was anyway,” Sam muttered in an odd tone. He shrugged it off before Dean could call him on it. “So, you know, what about the plan?”

It took several seconds for Dean to recall exactly what Sam had told him before they’d gotten too deep in their argument. “Oh. Well, I don’t like all the spells, but…hell, exorcism’s the only way to get it out of Dad, isn’t it. I guess if you’re positive you can pull those off. You are positive, right?”

“It’s Dad, Dean,” Sam simply said, face solemn. Not that he really needed to say anymore.

“Then that’ll have to be it, because I don’t think we’ll get a chance for any Plan B.” Dean kicked at the grass, then turned to look down the road. “I’ll start packing up. Go get the books—I’ll leave a note for Bobby and we’ll finish up on the way there.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Think Bobby’ll be okay with that?”

“Think I care?” Dean retorted. “He’s Dad’s friend. It’s not like he wouldn’t be used to it.”

That was worth a couple wry smiles and a little conspiratorial moment. But as much as Dean wanted to pretend, this wasn’t like all the other times they’d pulled off a hat trick finish. This wasn’t even like an opening-night show. This was on a whole different level, and Dean was already getting vertigo.

* * *

Sunrise Apartments took a while to get to, and not just because Sam’s off-the-Net directions hadn’t taken into account a bunch of recently-started construction projects; Luther argued for an indirect approach, and the point of that was so clear Dean had to assent. It ended up for the better, probably. They still got there just as the sun began to set, and by then Dean had had plenty of time to put on a calm act for Sam’s benefit.

Sam made it obvious he didn’t completely buy it, but he got used to concentrating on other things so when they finally parked a few blocks away, he hopped out first without thinking. Which left Dean in the front and Luther in the back.

“You’re going to kill me after this,” Luther said, the same way he’d say they were now under a highway overpass.

Dean shrugged as he got the Colt out from the glove compartment. “Yeah. Always was my top choice, but now there aren’t any other choices, so that makes it easy.”

“I can get that.” Luther sounded so resigned about it that Dean had to turn around. But no, it didn’t look like Luther was mocking him.

“Do you have a death-wish or something? Because I really don’t get you,” Dean said.

A twisted smile flicked over Luther’s face. Then he turned away to reach for the door-handle. “I don’t actually know right now, Dean. How about I get back to you on that one?”

“Sure.” Dean started to get out, then turned back quickly and grabbed Luther’s arm. He jerked him forward enough to hiss into Luther’s ear. “But you’d better believe that if you hurt my family, we can make you regret it, death-wish or no death-wish.”

“Oh, I believe in that more than anything right now,” Luther shot back. He yanked himself free, then swung himself out of the car.

That put him and Sam in one place, and Dean in another, which was never going to happen again if Dean could help it. Dean was out before Luther’s other foot had fully settled on the ground.


	4. Pitfall

“Now you’ll go with the false gas alarm,” Dean muttered, eying Sunrise. The complex was a lot bigger than he’d been hoping for, and in a part of town where the number of bars and nightclubs meant not many of those lighted windows were going to go out soon. “Except how the hell is that supposed to work? We can’t call all the apartments individually, and if we call the building manager, he’ll just check the meter.”

Sam stopped stuffing folded-up notes into his pockets long enough to give Dean a weird look. “Huh? Since when—oh, my God, you’re still on about that bug infestation case?”

Luther, leaning against the nearby chain-link fence so it wasn’t totally obvious how crapped-out he still was, let out a little frustrated noise. “What’s wrong with pulling the fire alarm?”

“That won’t give us a lot of time between the fire department and the demon,” Sam said. He squinted up at the apartments, nervously tapping his fingers on the door-handle. “Then again, not like anything we could do would. I guess we’ll just have to check the rooms fast.”

Dean reluctantly found himself agreeing. Even besides the demon, there was the exorcism to consider—nobody was sure how long or well tranquilizers would work on a possessed person, so from the moment they had Dad back, they’d have to move fast. “Well, you can at least pull one in the back,” he said to Luther. “We’ll go in the front, and then if you actually stick around, we all meet back at the car.”

That resulted in another sharp look from Sam; Luther just exhaled irritably again and pushed off the fence. He wavered a second before getting his balance, then walked off around the corner.

“Once we’ve got Dad back, we’re talking about that,” Sam muttered. He grabbed the sides of his jacket and jerked at it to resettle it on his shoulders, uneasily watching the apartments.

“Whatever the hell ‘that’ is supposed to be.” It seemed clear enough to Dean: vampire was a monster, vampire needed blood to live, therefore vampire getting blood was a bad idea. And even besides the vampire thing—oh, look, he could “distance himself from the situation” too—who in their right mind wanted to owe that much to Luther? The guy had a bloated sense of what he was worth and a long memory. “Think we should just stand around here, or—”

Sam frowned, then reached out and flipped Dean’s coat away from his side. Instant bulging eyes. “Dean, are you kidding me? You can’t take the pistol in there—we can’t do the exorcism here, and we can’t waste the bullets.”

“We’ve got four left. That’s plenty, since I know I’m not a crappy shot,” Dean retorted, yanking his coat close to him. He ground his heel into the ground for another second, checking out the neighborhood, then started off across the parking lot.

The crunching of the gravel got on Dean’s nerves, but not for long: Sam must have hop-skipped his way after Dean to catch up so fast. “Yeah? What would Dad say? You know he’d be pissed off.”

“Well, maybe I don’t give a shit. We’re gonna go in there and face a bunch of demons who hurt Dad and don’t like us much, and this gun can kill them. Seems logical enough to me.” A newspaper rack was conveniently positioned right inside of the first set of doors, which allowed for loitering without attracting the attentions of the lobby guard. When Dean flipped open the paper, the first thing he saw was a headline on a mysterious massacre of a local family. He snapped it shut again, barely keeping himself from just ripping it into confetti.

“ _Well_ , you’re not exactly known for your appeals to logic,” Sam hissed, snatching at Dean’s arm.

Just then, the alarm went off, and Dean swore to himself that that would be the only time he ever felt grateful towards Luther. He spun around and yanked open the second door; his foot caught the newspaper rack and he heard Sam yelp, but kept on going. No thump followed, so Sam had managed to dodge.

The guard shouted after them, but was way too slow. By the time he’d gotten around the desk, Sam had just slid through the door to the stairwell and Dean was kicking the door shut after him. “Our friend’s on fifth!” Dean yelled. “Got the flu! Gotta check on him!”

Sam just pounded up the stairs. “Split up?” he shouted back down.

Dean grabbed the railing and launched himself after Sam, only marginally aware of the edges of steps scraping the soles of his feet. He was opening his mouth to answer when a wave of acrid, ashy stink whooshed down over him, like he’d just stepped into some kind of demonic slipstream.

At the same time, a silver, sharp-looking crescent suddenly smashed its way through the door towards which Sam was approaching. It withdrew and Sam threw himself backwards at the same time; Dean brushed past and gave Sam a smack as he did to keep his brother from breaking his neck on the stairs. Then he got a good grip on the railings and kicked in the door just as he figured whoever was on the other side had to be in the middle of swinging again.

The door rammed back about six inches, hit something and came to a quivering stall. Both Dean and Sam waited for the second thump before Dean shoved the door open. A guy with a bloody nose, dressed like a businessman caught in the middle of breaking down his suit, was lying in the hallway, with the ax he’d been using to go all _The Shining_ on them next to him. He blocked the door so Dean had to squeeze and then hop, kicking the ax out into the stairwell as he did.

“Try not to touch him,” Sam hissed. “You can transfer demons that way.”

“Sounds like the chickenpox.” Dean was already four feet past the poor son of a bitch and moving quickly now that he had the scent. It really was an unmistakable smell…he briefly thought about the fact that the trail was too damned easy, then remembered both sides were counting on that and kept on going.

His feet skidded to a stop in the middle of the hallway, just before a nondescript door whose only distinguishing characteristic was that it was still closed when all the other doors were flung open or at least ajar from the hasty departure of their apartments’ inhabitants. Sam had started to slow before Dean had, but he kept on going till he was flanking the door. He glanced at Dean; his hand dropped a little from beneath his coat, showing the dull gleam of a gun in it. Nodding, Dean moved so he was presenting his side to the door and cupped his hand around his mouth.

He carefully tapped his foot against the door. “Hello? Uh, this is security. There’s been a fire alarm and everyone needs to evacuate the building.”

No answer. No _verbal_ answer, anyway. Someone got up inside and walked towards the door, so softly that at first Dean wasn’t sure exactly what he was hearing. He still wasn’t by the time they reached the door, but he jerked his chin at Sam and braced himself. His fingers went at first to the Colt, but Dean pulled them further back to grab his knife just as the door slammed open.

No ax this time, but the woman swung a butcher’s knife at Dean hard enough so that when he ducked, it chipped a hunk from the door-frame. He let momentum carry him into her knees and shoved her back into the room; she let out a soft, snarling kind of gasp, but that was it.

Dean stood up, caught the hasty blur and hastily ducked down again. His hand hit the floor just in time to keep him from falling on his ass. “Man, warn a guy, would you?” he muttered, shoving his knife back in its sheath.

“Sorry.” Sam flipped the butcher’s knife around so he was holding it with a proper grip and stepped into the room. He paused to bend over the woman, which gave Dean a chance to get in front again.

One sniff and Dean was up against the bedroom door, ripping it open so hard he felt the knob screws start to pry out of the wood. The door hit the wall with a bang loud enough to be heard over the fire alarm’s wailing, but Dean barely paid it any attention. His eyes were frozen to the figure sprawled over the bed.

It was Dad. He knew that much, but…God, those goddamn sons of bitches. They’d bloodied up his face so that was nearly unrecognizable, and so much more blood was crusted around his wrists that the ropes holding them to the headboard were only identifiable by shape. And the way he was lying down…people could lie limp because they were tired, because they were relaxed, or because they’d had every bone twisted and every muscle wrung till their bodies couldn’t take it anymore. One guess what it smelled and looked like.

“Dean?” Sam called.

It snapped Dean out of his shock. He scrambled over and got on the bed, moving as fast as he could with as little jarring of the mattress as possible. He gave Dad’s chest a cursory check for injuries, did a more thorough one on Dad’s legs, and all through that, thanked God he could still hear a heartbeat, thready though it was.

“Jesus Christ. Is he—”

“He’s alive,” Dean said curtly. All right, he was grateful for being a vampire right now. If it weren’t for the better hearing, he probably would’ve been flipping out even worse.

Sam stayed by the door, oddly enough. He let out a weird cough. “ _Dean_. Is he—”

Shit. Right, demon possession. But the stench of blood—of _Dad’s blood_ \--was so overpowering that Dean couldn’t smell anything else. Couldn’t even tell if something was wrong with it, because having that smell in the air was wrong to begin with.

Dean got his hands under Dad’s head with some vague thought about checking on his skull and maybe trying to sniff through the thick reek, but then Dad’s eyelashes fluttered. Struggled against the dried clots sticking them together…after a moment, Dad’s right eye slowly pried itself open. The left followed more slowly so Dean had to reach out with a trembling finger and carefully, very carefully scrape some of the bloody crusts from there.

“Dad?” he whispered.

They had to go through the same painful, painfully slow process when Dad’s mouth futilely tried to twitch into a smile. “Dean…”

“Dad.” Sam put enough weight in that one word so that he had to be practically floating to the ceiling in relief. But it only lasted for a second; he went on in a deadly serious voice. “We’ve got to go, Dean. I can hear them getting up in the hallway.”

Dean pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth, staring down at his father. And Dad stared back, expression slowly turning puzzled beneath the dazedness.

When Dad had spoken, Dean hadn’t _heard_ any demon in the undertones. But…

“Can you walk?” Dean urgently asked. He pushed the thought of the tranquilizer in his pocket to the back of his mind and reached for the ropes holding Dad down.

“If not, carry him.” Something slammed; when Dean turned around, he saw Sam dragging a chair over to block the door. The other side was getting the hell pounded out of it, and one blow was particularly brutal, smashing all the way through the wood. Sam barely got out of the way in time to avoid the splinters. He had one hand pressed to the side of his head and was grimacing. “Fire escape. I can’t—what the hell…it’s not coming…I can’t hold them…”

“Got it,” Dean grunted, getting one arm under his father.

* * *

By the time they got down to the ground floor, the sirens of the fire trucks were deafening the air. Surprisingly enough, the firefighters didn’t seem to have made their way to the back yet, though the way was clear enough.

Dean had just gotten Dad and himself across the back-alley. The moment the wall was near enough, Dad made a grab for it and clung to the bricks like a baby to its mother. A swell of bitterness slicked over Dean’s tongue and he swallowed hard, turning away.

Lucky that he did after all. Sam had been following them, but not that closely: he kept stopping to squint at the clatter on the steps above them. He’d apparently been doing that again when some demon-possessed guy had had come barreling out of a ground-floor door into him, taking him straight to the pavement. Of course Sam was fighting back, but the guy had already gotten his hands around Sam’s neck. Silver also glinted there.

Nerves jumped Dean forward, but then his mind managed to catch up and he froze, Colt drawn and aimed at the wrestling pair. He couldn’t get a clear shot—

\--a backwards glance said Dad was fine—

\--looked forward again in time to see a heavy trashcan lid go spinning into the guy, knocking him up and off of Sam. The second Sam’s flailing arm fell out of the way, Dean shot the bastard in the temple.

Hot, caustic air blasted outwards from the man as he toppled backward, landing partly across Sam’s legs. The blood that dribbled from his head was black at first, but went red as his body jerked and twitched, then fell still. And the smell changed, too. The man was…was a man again.

“Dean!” Sam hissed. It was a tough call whether he was relieved and thankful, pissed off at the waste of a bullet, or just plain shocked. He elbowed himself up, paused to kick out from under the dead man, and then turned over.

Something silver fell from his shoulder as he did. Sam grabbed it and it swung in the air: jewelry?

“Get in the damn car already!” Luther. Luther?

Dean glanced up to see him stumbling across the lot, new bruises on his jaw and ash smeared over his hands. When Dean kept moving his gaze up, he saw an oily ripple against the dark sky, which had to be smoke. Fucking bastard had actually gone and started a fire, so that’d been why the firefighters were hanging back.

Luther went down to one knee about a foot from Sam, and Sam automatically reached out to grab him. It occurred to Dean that the trashcan lid had come from the same direction as Luther, too. He gritted his teeth, then jerked slightly left as movement attracted his attention. A second later, the number of monster-killing bullets went down to two, and Dean was watching a woman collapse along the building wall, leaving behind a wide red swath. The knife she’d been in the act of throwing rattled a few inches across the pavement before coming to rest near Sam’s right foot.

A harsh gasp behind Dean made him spin around. He barely caught Dad before the other man completely hit the ground, eyes rolling back into his head.

“Come on, Dean,” Sam said, pushing up next to them. He had Dad in the backseat and was shoving Luther in shotgun almost before Dean could blink. Sam acknowledged Dean’s discomfort with a curt twitch of his shoulders. “Hey, presto—I can lift things with my mind again. Now let’s go already.”

* * *

Dad still hadn’t pulled back to consciousness yet, so they’d arranged him as comfortably as possible on the bed. Under the devil’s trap Sam had drawn on the ceiling, though Dean wasn’t all that sure they needed it now. But it wasn’t like they had the time to wipe it off, and if that really wasn’t something they had to worry about, it wasn’t like it was going to hurt Dad.

Luther went in the bathroom. He opted for lying in the tub and slumping over the side as he poked around the silver charm Sam had brought back. Some of his wounds from before had reopened and were sluggishly oozing a thin, reddish fluid, but Dean had gotten himself seated between him and Sam before that suggestion could even raise its ugly head. _Everything_ else—and God, was there a lot—aside, even Sam had to understand he couldn’t donate that much blood twice in as many days.

“It’s got to be what was keeping me from just slamming those guys through the wall,” Sam was saying. Scratching at his head, he leaned slightly back to check on things in the next room.

“Then why isn’t it working now? How’s Dad?” Actually, Dean could smell how Dad was, and it wasn’t good. They needed to get out of here…maybe back to Bobby’s, where they could get their hands on medical equipment better than the rudimentary stuff in their trunk kit. They needed to get out just because this was too close to where Dad had—had _failed_ \--and that fact was making Dean’s bad nerves worse.

He wanted to just get up already and look for himself, but he wasn’t going to leave Sam and Luther alone again. Fucking vampire son of a bitch.

With a jerky shrug, Sam turned back. He was worried and chewing on his lip, rippling his fingers over the doorframe. “He’s still out. He should be coming round by now—did you give him the right dose?”

“You measured it into the syringe, so you tell me,” Dean muttered. He pushed down the pang of guilt he felt at that lie, but it mounted a surprisingly stiff resistance. Then there was a clang behind him and he nearly fell off the toilet when he spun around.

It was just Luther collapsing back into the tub; the only signs he was there now were the bloody hand hanging limp over the rim and the heavy, staggered breathing. An odd wave of…not really concern, but maybe pity…went over Dean. Two hundred years old, but the last few weeks of that had been pretty shitty for him, and it wasn’t like he was going to see much return on all that effort. For a moment, Dean spared a thought to wonder why Luther kept trying.

“He didn’t look that bad before,” Sam said, looking white around the mouth. The circles beneath his eyes had gotten a hell of a lot worse, Dean suddenly noticed.

Which reminded Dean that pity still wasn’t the right feeling for the opportunistic bastard who’d given Sam that pallor in the first place. And probably had had a big part in Sam’s weird no-powers moment earlier. “Well, he knew what he was doing.”

Dean leaned over to pick up the necklace from the floor, but paused when a shadow fell over him. He looked up into Sam’s furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. “Jesus, Dean. Look, maybe you can’t ever believe anything he says, but could you just trust me for once to know what I’m doing? It’s not like he was in any shape to make me.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel _better_?” Dean incredulously said. He glanced at the floor, as if the chipped and soiled tile was going to help things make any more sense to him. Then again, it was so bad even that had been worth a try. “Yeah, now I’m really going to go along with this—have you looked at Dad? If you even think, for one goddamned second, that he could take an exorcism with the way he is—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Sam backed off, but only to get his unprotected back up against the doorframe. Then he stared hard at Dean, at first disbelieving and then furiously pleading. “Oh, my God, Dean. Dean. Tell me you did tranq Dad. Tell me you didn’t just—”

“—he doesn’t smell like it! He doesn’t sound like he’s possessed—” Dean shoved himself to his feet and swept out an arm towards Luther “—and didn’t _he_ say I’d be able to tell? Well, if that’s not me listening to him, then I don’t know what the hell is—”

“We talked about this!” Sam snarled back. His hand went out, then whipped back to glue itself to the frame like he’d gotten scalded. “How sure are—”

It was only a soft, low creaking, but it cut through their rising voices like a knife through water. They both froze. Sam stopped with his lips still curled back from his teeth, which through the distorted view of adrenaline too long in Dean’s system were freakish big, broad white squares.

Then Sam shut his mouth, joint almost audibly snapping. He moved forward a fraction, exhaling, then abruptly twisted on his heel and went into the next room. “Dad?”

“…Sam?” came the shaky reply.

“Dad,” Dean breathed.

He started to follow, but a couple muffled thuds from the bathtub stopped Dean. Luther had pulled himself together enough to hook one arm over the rim and get his head over it, though his muscles were shivering from the effort. His skin was bloodless and his lips were the same, so much so that they were nearly indistinguishable from his teeth. “Don’t be so quick,” Luther hissed. “That thing hasn’t lasted so long without learning something about fooling people.”

“Guess you’re speaking from experience,” Dean drawled. In the next room, he could hear Sam warily asking Dad how he was feeling; Sam still was keeping his distance and that annoyed Dean.

A couple strands of hair twisted before Luther’s face. They got stuck to his clammy-looking cheek when he jerked, obviously stung. And still stung, he snorted contemptuously. “What else would I be speaking from?”

“You know, I’ve had way more than enough of you—” Dean had his fingers around Luther’s throat before he really knew what he was doing. If he’d had a moment to think about it, he would’ve remembered he needed to grab a knife first.

Luther had enough kick left in him to wrap his hands around Dean’s wrists, but he was so weak Dean could barely feel the yank. Another second and they would’ve gotten to see what a broken neck would do for a vampire.

Except Dad spoke again, more loudly so the intensity of his concern completely overrode the quavers in his voice. “Where’s Dean? Did it—”

“No!” was Sam’s violent reply. A beat later, Sam continued in a more collected tone. “No, he’s all right. He’s in the bathroom. We got you out…but Dad…we…we used up two the bullets doing it. But Dean’s fine, and you’re going to be fine.”

It sounded like Sam was relaxing, maybe finally coming round to the idea that _Dad_ wasn’t the one from which they were in danger. Dean felt himself sag a little, too, though he made sure it wasn’t enough to let Luther get away.

“Well…that’s fine. That’s fine. I just want to know you’re both all right…” The bed creaked some more as Dad moved. Rolled off, since a few moments later Dean heard someone’s feet hit the ground, and then Sam hastily lunging towards Dad. To help him stand, Dean decided.

“We’re fine,” Dean called over his shoulder. He let out a long breath as he turned back to face forwards, and then he paused, blinking. He’d actually forgotten he’d been in the middle of strangling somebody.

And Luther was staring hard at him in a weird—kind of like Lassie trying to tell—Dean stiffened. His fingers convulsively tightened, but Luther didn’t so much as twitch. He just stared and stared at Dean, and in that stare was pure fear.

“Oh, shit—” Dean threw Luther from him and was leaping for the bathroom door in the same movement, but he’d barely skidded before it when a gust of sulfurous, bitter air blew him backwards.

He flailed and his nails scratched over porcelain, slowing him enough so that he could seize the towel-bar and try to sling himself away from the far wall. He still hit it hard enough to stun, and he was scrambling to recover when some force just…snatched him out of the bathroom. The ugly wood paneling on the wall—the _far_ wall of the bedroom—rushed up at him. And then it was painful. All over, and Dean heard crunching sounds and he couldn’t be sure whether they were his knees getting dislocated, or maybe his chin and right cheekbone, or maybe his ribs.

“Dean!” Sam screamed.

All of a sudden, the pressure dropped. Dean promptly hit the floor, and it was only because he happened to hit at the right angle that he rolled over and got to see Sam try to slam some kind of air-wall at Dad; it sure as hell wasn’t because he had enough strength left to flip himself over.

The thickened air hit Dad and rocked him back so far Dean almost thought it was going to—but then an absolutely sickening, smug smile spread over his father’s face. And the air went still, and Sam choked, grabbed at his throat and fell to his knees. Fell further than that.

“Way to catch on, Dean,” the thing in his father’s body chuckled. Shaking his head, he walked over to the bathroom doorway and stooped to pick something up from the ground: the necklace, which Dean had dropped in his hurry. “For a second there, I thought I might just get away with it—you wouldn’t believe how much your Daddy’s screaming at that. But you just had to remember your Dad’s a vengeful, narrow-minded son of a bitch when it comes to me. Of course he wouldn’t forgive you for wasting those bullets.”

His voice was deeper, rougher, but lighter at the same time. The bastard was laughing at them, relishing every goddamn word. It was in the jaunty tilt of his head, the loose, nonchalant way he moved as he walked over to Sam, who was still curled up choking.

“And he’s never, ever gonna forgive you for letting me get to Sam here. You know what he was like after the mess with the _shtriga_? Well, multiply that by a couple thousand times and you might have a _fraction_ of an idea of what he’s like now.” The demon squatted down and ran his fingers through Sam’s hair, still grinning. He snorted when Sam flinched and leaned back, watching with cold eyes as Sam went that much whiter in the face, scrabbling at his throat. “I’m debating how much to tell him about you two and that vampire. Man, this is _fun_.”

Slight noise from the bathroom. Dean raised his head, then winced and jerked it back to the floor when the door slammed itself shut. He stared as long as he could at Sam, but Sam was too busy struggling to breathe to look back, and so he had to bring his gaze back to his father’s eyes.

They were very cold and dark, and they were happy as well. “Going to enjoy dealing with him, too—nothing like closing old accounts. But first things first,” the demon said. It flipped the necklace so the charm landed in its palm, then pressed it up against the underside of Sam’s chin. “You got a lot farther than I was expecting, but you’ve still got a while to go, Sammy. What? You don’t agree? Then come on, psychic wonder. Show me what you can do. _Come on_.”

Fucker. Fucking bastard…the veins in Sam’s face were popping out from sheer raging will, because there definitely wasn’t enough blood getting through to them to be from that. But he was fighting, and keeping the demon’s attention on him, and the Colt was right on the table, less than six feet from Dean. Six feet.


	5. Have Mercy

Dean had barely raised his head when his father’s body suddenly whipped around. The demon grinned at him, and then Dean was back up against the wall, feeling like he had a bulldozer keeping him there but only seeing thin air.

“You’re dead,” Sam hissed. “You’re dead. The moment you—”

“The moment I what? Get out of your dad? Sorry, Sam, but I just don’t really see that happening. I mean, he’s in better shape than most twenty-year-olds—” it took a step towards Dean, then theatrically winced “—aside from the parts I had to have banged up, but those’ll heal. He’s got access to all these convenient stashes across the country, he’s got a good network of friends…well, the ones still alive…”

The demon ambled over to the table as it talked so it could pick up the gun. It spun it once, then tossed it onto the nearest bed.

“That’s been a pain in the ass,” it said. “Good thing you’re so lousy at research you don’t even know its limitations, or else I’d really have been in trouble.”

Sam snarled and the air above him _heaved_. The tendons in his neck and arms bulged out as he tried to push up, and for a moment it actually looked as if he might do it. Dean’s eyes shot to the demon…who had a smile playing around his mouth. “Sam—” Dean started.

As he crashed back down, Sam let out a soft, hurt sound. His arms struggled to pull back, trying to wrap around his chest, but the demon wasn’t even letting him do that. Then Sam’s head suddenly snapped back and Dean couldn’t do anything but watch as dark, hand-shaped bruises slowly spread over Sam’s throat.

“Why are you doing this?” Dean said. His voice was shaking, and he honestly didn’t know whether it was from rage or terror.

“Family.” Somehow the demon managed to drain the black hatred from his father’s eyes and look almost solemn. It took one step towards Dean. “You know Meg? My daughter.” Another step. “And those two you killed while getting your _Dad_ back? My sons. So this is…poetic justice, I guess.”

It was almost within arm’s reach of Dean, and was lifting its hand when it suddenly flinched. Then it jerked around to glower at Sam, who went into a new fit of choking. Sam was going white in the face—white in the eyes, the fury there was so hot. “Bull…shit,” he gasped. “You really…cared about…them, you would’ve…would’ve fought for them. You—you were _there_ \--our _Dad_ never—would’ve just stood—”

Red flushed up in their father’s face, and the demon made the body take an abortive, livid step forward. But then it rocked back, laughing and loose again. “Yeah, you’re right. What the hell do I care? I’ve got thousands of other kids, for we are legion.” All the surface cheer suddenly drained away, leaving only the cold hate. “Still, _you_ are getting on my damn nerves. I was going to let you try to fight me, have that much to salve your pride, but I think I’m just gonna have to shut you down.”

A glint flashed up, then dropped back into their father’s hand. Sam’s eyes instantly went to the necklace the demon was tossing; when the demon stopped to take the charm off the chain, Sam twitched away from him.

This provoked another bark of laughter from the demon. “What? If I had a way to start you up, don’t you think I’d have one to turn you off?”

“Fuck.” Sam gagged, scraped grooves in the carpet. “You.”

“Open up, little Sammy,” the demon purred. It squatted down by Sam again and seized his jaw, sticking one thumb in at the side to keep Sam’s mouth open. Then it tried to drop the charm in, but at the last moment, Sam managed to jerk away. “You troublesome little bastard—stop fighting. You and all the other children like you…you can’t do a damn thing to stop what I’m doing. This has been set for centuries.”

First Dean strained at one arm, then the other. He couldn’t get any give at all—none. His limbs were glued to the wall and fuck vampiric strength because it wasn’t doing any good. It wasn’t helping, and he probably could break his arms without getting anywhere.

Sam was still dodging somehow, free enough of the demon’s power for that, but he couldn’t move anything besides his head and inevitably he’d be forced to swallow the charm. How had he gotten that much freedom…

Finally Dean glanced at the bathroom door, but no help was coming from that direction. Son of a _bitch_ \--

He broke his arms. The pain was bad when the bones snapped, but when he sagged back? Too worn out and hurting to do anything after that? That was when it turned into _agony_. The world spun white, then spun back into horribly sharp colors as he frantically tried to will away the bleariness and figure out what had happened.

The first thing that became clear was a dark head, and at first Dean thought it belonged to his father. But then the person whirled furiously about and it was Sam’s desperate face; shock momentarily dimmed the pain as Dean opened his eyes wider to take in the whole scene. His dad was flying through the air, and Sam was stumbling backwards…apparently Dean’s last effort had taken up enough of the demon’s attention to give Sam a chance.

When his father hit the bed, the pressure holding Dean up evaporated and he skidded down the wall. Hit hard on his ass, and the impact rammed up through his cracked ribs and snapped the broken ends of his arm-bones against each other. Sheer will kept Dean from passing out.

Sam knocked up against the table and fell, but caught himself on the edge. He was already shouting in Latin, and the lines of the circle above their dad were glowing a deep, dull red. Their father—no, the demon was writhing and twisting, but occasionally his blows would take an odd turn at the end, as if some invisible barrier had deflected the hand or foot from going out of the circle.

Dean made a stab at cradling each arm with the other hand, but that hurt too much. When he hissed in pain, Sam glanced at him and faltered in the chanting so that the demon almost lunged off the bed. Barely in time, Sam jerked back to attention.

The next time Dean felt like he wanted to make wounded noises, he shoved his tongue up against his clenched teeth. He managed to get his hands braced against his elbows and gingerly, awkwardly edged over to the other bed. The one where the Colt was.

Just as Dean flopped on his back onto the bed, Sam’s voice abruptly spiked in volume. The stink of ozone slashed through the air, and then Dean was flattening himself as much as possible as a vicious crackle whipped through the room. He only saw the edge of the white flare. By the time he’d rolled over, mangling his lip against the pain, the light was gone and Dad’s body was lying limply on the next bed.

Sam was half-collapsed over the table, staring at Dad. His shoulders heaved and his mouth hung open as he gasped for air. After a moment, he flicked his eyes to Dean, who raised his brows in question.

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I got through it once, but it should take more than one reading—and nothing’s come out yet—”

Air rasped out of Dad’s mouth and both Sam and Dean’s attentions went to him. After a pause so long Dean almost suffocated in sympathy, Dad sucked in a breath. His eyelashes twitched, then flew upward. The one hand Dean could see slowly curled two fingers, then weakly tried to rise. “…Sam? Dean?”

“Dad?” Dean whispered. He had a feeling he might be crying from the sheer strain.

“Oh, God, make it stop. Don’t…” Those definitely were tears trickling down from Dad’s eye. They mixed with the blood so by the time they dripped onto the blankets, they’d formed a thick, brownish substance. “Don’t—”

Dad’s hand dropped in a fluid movement; Dean had been slowly leaning forward, but now he threw himself back and down over the pistol, pinning it to the bed. Something tried to snatch him back at the same time his father, snarling like a pitbull, made a lunge at Sam, but Sam had immediately started yelling Latin again. The force dropped Dean, which temporarily filled his vision with large black spots.

When they’d cleared out again, the demon in his father was writing so hard the skin was stretching obscenely far in places, shaping itself as if clawed hands were trying to push out from inside. One pushed up from the side of his father’s neck and crooked fingers at Dean, who flinched away in revulsion. “Sam, get the damn thing out of him! It’ll kill him!”

Sam was too busy mumbling, but he threw an irritated look Dean’s way and jerked his hand in an ‘I’m trying!’ gesture.

“You goddamn pieces of shit. You think—you think this is going to work? You think you can pull something like this on me? Do I look bush-league to you?” the demon hissed, thrashing around. He was making the veins in Dad’s eyes stand out so much they were nearly separated from the whites. “You little fucks. You—”

Dad’s head abruptly went back and his whole body bowed upward till the only contacts he had with the mattress were his hands, feet and the top of his head. The muscles in his face distorted grotesquely, pulling away from his mouth till it was monstrously large. A tiny black tendril, so thin Dean could barely make it out, sluggishly drifted out of it. Then another, and then another and another till an oily cloud was grudgingly pulling out of Dad. Dean’s heart twisted in his chest.

And then it suddenly all fell back in. The cloud streamed back into Dad, who crashed to the bed with the demon’s cursing coming out of his mouth…Sam crumpled over the table, barely hanging on by his nails, and Dean just doubled over under the whiplash of disappointment.

A slow laugh cracked out of his father’s mouth, and then the demon turned to smile silkily at Dean. “It’s not going to work.”

“Not yet, but eventually it’ll work. And you’d better believe I can keep trying till it does,” Sam retorted. “Guess you messed up on how much I’d learn before you got to me.”

“Oh?” The demon transferred his gaze to Sam, and the calm certainty of it turned Dean’s gut cold. “What you’ve-- _learned_.” And then muscles slackened, eyes bleared over, and Dad was staring in horror at Sam. “Jesus Christ. Sam—you and Dean—you two…you’ve…with each other…tell me he’s lying. Sam, please. Please.”

As soon as Sam had figured out what Dad meant, he went white. His mouth opened, moved a little, but nothing came out. Not even a stammer.

The silence pressed hard on Dad, crumpling his face in as he let his head fall back. His eyes widened, then closed as if he couldn’t bear to even look at the ceiling.

The light in the room flickered.

“So much for familial _love_ ,” the demon suddenly snarled, jerking up. He threw himself towards the end of the bed and was stopped in mid-air, but to Dean’s horror, he’d managed to force one arm out of the circle’s span. Dad’s eyes rolled and the whites turned a lurid red, while a stream of vicious obscenities poured out of his mouth.

Sam flinched backwards and nearly fell over the chair. He caught himself and tried to say something, but he overshot his breath and ended up choking a little. The glow of the lines on the ceiling dimmed even more; the demon heaved his shoulder forward and was held up for a second, but then there was an awful tearing sound and his other arm abruptly swung out. The chair rammed forward of its own accord, just barely missing Sam as he dove sideways.

Dean jammed the Colt between his legs, then forced himself up and over the end of the bed. The jagged ends of his broken bones ripped at his insides, but he managed to keep the pistol held under him. “Sam!”

After one pass, the chair came around again for another go, but this time, it skidded to a stop six inches from Sam. The wood groaned and vibrated; snarling, the demon imperiously waved one hand. That made the chair leap, but just straight up. Sam had shoved himself back on his knees and was staring fiercely at the chair, lips peeled back from his teeth.

He suddenly whipped around to look at the demon—the chair burst into flames and the demon was buffeted back a few inches, but at the same time, something seized Dean and flung him into the wall. He tried to grab the Colt, but the pistol slipped through his fingers. Clipped his thumbnail.

“Sam! The gun—” It felt like Dean was trying to shout through water. His body was immersed in pain and too sluggish to hear anything else, and his own hearing was muffled, distorted. But he could still see, with that strange clarity that sometimes came with shock.

Sam made an attempt to intercept the gun mid-flight, but missed and landed on his side on the floor. He was up almost at once, but he didn’t have time for a second try. So he screamed out the exorcism ritual while backing towards Dean, but he kept his eyes on their father’s body so he didn’t notice he’d slammed up against the other bed and wasn’t going anywhere.

The demon had grabbed the gun, but was swaying back and forth; their Dad’s face was sometimes flushed scarlet in rage and sometimes pale with grief, and always contorting till Dean wondered that the muscles hadn’t torn themselves off the bones.

“Dad?” Dean said. 

It came out more like a croak, and couldn’t possibly have been audible over Sam’s yelling, but somehow it seemed to get through. Dad suddenly stiffened, then fell over. His head dangled off the mattress, while his arm had dropped so that the gun was plainly visible at the edge of the bed.

“Oh, God. It’s still in me,” he rasped.

Sam slowed in his chanting, then hurriedly finished up. He started to speak, had to cough, and tried again. He sounded like his throat had been shredded. “Dad. I’ll get it out. Just…just hang on.”

“No…it’s _in_ me. I can’t fight it—”

“I’ll get it out, Dad. I’ll take care of it—”

“You have to kill it! Kill me, Sam! It’s the only way—the only way to stop this and to stop what’s happening to us,” Dad barked. Then he jerked in on himself, crying out in pain.

Both Sam and Dean moved forward; Sam went towards the pistol. But before they could do anything, Dad suddenly sat up with an unnatural fluidity and swung the Colt around to point at Sam. Red was leaking back into the whites of his eyes.

Sam put up his hands, but not to indicate surrender. “Get out of my father,” he growled.

“No. No, I won’t…Sam, you have to kill me. Destroy it,” Dad desperately said. His hands were shaking, and his voice wavered in and out of the demon’s voice.

“No! No, Dad—” Dean arched and pushed his way up the wall “—Sam, Sam, hurry up and get it out—”

Sam was already starting up again. A fine spasm began in Dad’s head, but quickly grew in intensity as it spread down his body. His eyes jerked to Sam, then to Dean, and then back to Sam. The Colt slowly dropped in jagged stages.

An odd calm came over Dad. “I can’t ask you to do this,” he quietly said. His next words were broken up by a suppressed sob. “I love you boys.”

“ _Dad_ \--” Dean screamed, lunging forward.

He was dimly aware of Sam breaking off the ritual to do the same, but they were both too slow, too unprepared. The gun spun around with lightning speed and the world behind their father bloomed with blood. Then it went fiery and black, with smoke pouring in from all around. It got in Dean’s eyes and burnt out his tears, it got in his throat and scorched away his sobs. It suffocated him and left him blind and groping, and when he did find something, he clung to it with all the strength he still had. Sam couldn’t go, too.

* * *

Sam decided he was exhausted.

He’d gotten Dean out, and then in the parking lot had remembered about Luther and ended up yanking him out as well. Luther had been and still was mostly in some kind of coma, so that had turned out to be a wasted effort. What Sam probably should’ve done was to go for some of their gear that’d been in the room that he’d had to leave behind. They’d have a hell of a time replacing it all.

God knew why he’d gone for the fucking pistol. He pushed himself around in his chair to stare at the goddamned thing, which was just lying there on the table where he’d dropped it. It was still covered in soot and blood. He should probably clean it off. He’d had to do a quick and dirty scrub on himself with paper towels and a water bottle in order to get this new room, and if the cleaning staff came in and saw that gun, all that effort would be wasted, too.

Instead Sam got up and checked on Dean, whom he’d laid on the bed farther from the door. They both had some experience with setting bones, but when Sam had tentatively felt over Dean’s chest, it’d been like pressing into pebbly sand in places. He’d ended up experimenting with the telekinesis to get all the bones set, but since he couldn’t see what he was actually doing, he just had to hope that he’d done it right. At least the vampirism would help with that.

Dean was still out, skin around his mouth tight and papery with lack of blood, so Sam moved over to the other bed. He stared down at Luther for a long moment, then carefully climbed on the mattress till he was kneeling beside him. After carefully rolling up his sleeve, he peeled off the bandage over his wrist.

None of the cuts were fresh enough, so he had to get out his knife and scrape off one of the scabs. Blood instantly welled up, and for a moment Sam had to think about Dad’s blood splattered all over the wall.

He gritted his teeth and swiped some off his arm, then put his finger by Luther’s nose. Nothing happened, so Sam smeared it over Luther’s lips. At that, he thought he got a slight twitch, but apparently not one that signaled a return to consciousness. The blood was now in danger of dribbling over the bed-sheets, so Sam wiped off more and shoved his finger into Luther’s mouth. He scraped off as much as he could inside, then moved back.

After a moment’s thought, he scooted forward so he could keep Luther’s face pointing up with his knee. Then he liberally smeared his index and middle fingers and went back to trying to force-feed Luther.

Around the fifth repetition, Sam felt a slight sucking at his fingers. He left them in a little longer, and when he did pull them out, there was resistance. Instead of putting them back in with a fresh coating of blood, he just turned his wrist and pushed it up to Luther’s mouth.

Luther definitely was swallowing now, but still very weakly so the blood tended to trickle out; Sam didn’t want any more waste, so he wiped at the overflow with his other hand, then dripped the blood back between Luther’s lips. They parted more, fitting themselves to the curve of Sam’s arm, and a wet, snaky pressure briefly moved across the cut itself. It withdrew, only to come back more strongly.

Sam was beginning to feel a little dizzy, so he let himself lean forward so he could rest more of himself on the bed. He watched—pretty calmly, he thought—as Luther’s eyes fluttered open. No real comprehension beyond that of a feeding animal was in there; at the same time, fingers clamped around Sam’s elbow and hand, pulling him a fraction closer. He momentarily lost his balance and fell half on Luther.

Teeth snapped into Sam’s arm. The pain was intensely localized and made him try to jerk back, but Luther’s grip didn’t let him move. He scrabbled with his free hand for the headboard and raised himself a bit, but by then the hurt had numbed and was actually pretty bearable. So Sam stayed where he was. He glanced over at Dean, but his brother was still deeply unconscious.

When he looked at Luther again, intelligence was present in Luther’s eyes, but it was struggling against fierce hunger. Sam gripped the headboard and rocked his arm so the cut opened up more; Luther’s eyes widened and he let out a muffled exclamation that caused blood to spill out from around Sam’s wrist. He dragged Sam forward and jerked up his knee at the same time, then twisted so his mouth nearly slid off Sam’s arm.

Sam shoved it back, and snarled when Luther fought him. “You’re a vampire, damn it. You could act like one.”

Luther spat, or tried to spit. The blood bubbled like crazy out of his mouth and got all over Sam’s arm, slicking it up so he accidentally pushed it right off Luther’s chin. He pulled back, but a hard blow in his stomach almost sent him falling off the bed and by the time he’d righted himself, Luther had dragged himself to the other side of the bed. “What the hell are you doing?” Luther demanded.

Then Luther looked around. A cracked-up laugh got out of Sam before he could help it. “My dad’s dead, and Dean’s half-dead, so don’t worry about somebody chopping off your head.”

He threw out his arm, dug his fingers deep into the bed and used that handhold to propel himself across the mattress before Luther could dodge. Sam grabbed Luther by the wrist and tried to lift the son of a bitch the rest of the way, but Luther only rose two inches before Sam’s head exploded in pain. He had to drop Luther, nearly losing his hold on him in the process.

“Sam—” Luther hissed.

Sam waved his bloody arm at Luther and Luther went stiff, distracted. It gave Sam the moment he needed to haul Luther back the old-fashioned way and get on top of him. “What? You seemed to like it a lot the last time, so what’s the matter?”

“Your father’s dead?” Luther stared up at Sam like he was—like he was _sorry_ for Sam. Sorry and worried, and oh, did that get on Sam’s nerves.

“Yeah. Yes, he’s dead, and he’s dead because he _shot_ himself to kill the demon that I couldn’t exorcise fast enough. That I couldn’t get rid of. I…I couldn’t help Dean, I couldn’t help Dad, and I’m what this is all about, so what am I supposed to be good for, anyway? _What?_ ” Sam snarled. He pretended to think for a second while Luther wriggled around trying to toss him off, then slammed down with his arm. It hit closed lips, and when Sam tried to jam his arm in, he got past the lips but couldn’t work in past the wall of clenched teeth. “I’m good for my vampire-crack blood, and for my worthless powers, and for getting people killed! That’s what! So why won’t you—”

It was the blood again that screwed things up. It made Sam slip to the side, and before he could recover, Luther had worked one arm free and had grabbed him by the shoulder to shove them over. Sam lashed out with his foot and rolled them back, but it seemed like he and Luther had managed to even themselves out in terms of strength right now. Figured. Once again, it wasn’t going to be a straight fight that’d settle matters.

“You are _not_ what it’s all about,” Luther snapped. His knee rammed up, probably aiming for Sam’s gut, but ending in Sam’s thigh. It hurt like hell, and Luther wasn’t slow to follow up. He got hold of Sam’s wrists and was wrenching them back when Sam just let himself drop.

To Sam, the blood smeared over Luther’s chin tasted like any other blood. Metallic, nastily sweet at the finish, generally unpleasant. But his mouth on Luther’s skin made Luther’s grip loosen a lot, so he pushed upwards till he’d covered Luther’s lips. And then he kissed him. Not nicely—that wasn’t even an option since Luther’s mouth had dropped so far open—but messily, deeply, like Sam was trying to drag out Luther’s brains. Which he basically was aiming to do.

Luther’s fingers went completely slack, allowing Sam to prop himself up on one elbow and work his other arm between them so he could rub fresh blood over Luther’s mouth. A slow hiss whistled over Sam’s wrist, and then Luther tried to turn his head away. So Sam ducked and went at his mouth again, and this time Luther convulsively pressed into it. His tongue flicked through Sam’s mouth before he tore himself away. Somehow he dodged Sam’s wrist and hauled himself halfway out from beneath Sam. “I am _not_ doing this for you.”

“Really? Judging on what just happened, I’d say Dean actually was right about that part.” Sam held onto Luther’s waist, but found himself unexpectedly short of breath. His head was still hurting, and his vision was starting to go a little fuzzy around the edges. His cut wrist was slowly numbing, which was a nice non-feeling to finally have. “Come on. I thought you’d given up on being the hero. You just try to survive, right? Well, here’s your chance.”

“I am not doing _this_ for you. Go blow out your own brains if you’re that determined on it,” Luther grated out. He twisted and jerked some more, but once it was clear he couldn’t get the rest of his body free, he slumped down to face Sam. His jaw dropped slightly in an open-mouthed, taunting smile. “Lot harder when you’ve really got to do it yourself than when you can blame it on somebody else, isn’t it?”

They stared at one another while the blood on Luther’s face slowly lost its moist sheen and while Sam felt the warmth of the stuff dribbling over his hand cool. Then Sam turned to look at the Colt. He’d thought about it. He’d thought he was too much of a failure to bother using that rare a bullet.

He thought, and suddenly he’d been yanked down and slammed onto his back by Luther, who looked all worried and fearful again. “What about Dean? What happens when he wakes up and finds you dead? Think he’s gonna keep from killing people forever?”

“Why do you always bring up Dean when you’re afraid of me?” Sam asked.

Luther flinched, but didn’t let go. “Think I’m gonna keep from killing him? I could, and then I’d be home free.”

“Well, you can’t seem to kill me, and you haven’t even—” Sam leaned up “—fucked _me_.”

When Luther flinched this time, Sam knocked his knees out from under him and heaved at his shoulders. He cursed and clawed at Sam, managing to grab enough of Sam’s shirt to drag Sam with him, but Sam stopped sliding at the edge of the bed while Luther continued down to the floor. Sam grabbed Luther’s arm and throat while he had the chance and yanked him forward again. This time, Sam didn’t pull away when he needed to breathe. He kept mashing their mouths together, feeling Luther’s teeth rip into his lips and tongue, begging for the goddamn blood to make enough of a difference. He wanted it. He made himself like it. He opened himself up to the downward spiral of dizzy heat, letting it spin out of him.

Luther’s free hand smacked him in the shoulder, then wrapped around it and pulled him forward. Then pushed back, pulled up…pushed over and up to curl around the back of Sam’s neck. He slowed it down, and then he made Sam take some of it back.

“ _Bastard_ ,” Sam hissed, jerking away. He couldn’t get as far as he wanted, thanks to Luther’s grip on him, and he couldn’t push Luther back, thanks to how weak he’d gotten himself. Weak, and tired, and so incredibly useless. “You goddamn asshole. Why not?”

“It’s insulting to my pride.” A humorless smile flicked over Luther’s face at whatever expression Sam made to that. Then he settled back on the ground, loosening up his hold. “You didn’t fail with Dean—from what I can tell, he just won’t let you help with that. And if your dad shot himself, then you weren’t exactly holding the gun to his head, were you?”

“I might as well have. The demon told him Dean and I had to screw a couple times, and the look on his face…” Sam dropped his head to the bed, then let go of Luther and let his arms dangle as well. He wasn’t exhausted—he was used up.

Luther’s hand was still on the back of Sam’s neck. Its fingers curled slightly, tickling the little hairs on the nape. “That only makes sense if he shot himself after the demon was out of him.”

“You don’t even know my Dad. Shut up,” Sam muttered. His eyes were stinging. They’d been so dry before Sam had had to drip water into them, but now they were wet and they still hurt. And his throat was closing up. “God. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t, and I can’t go back to—to law school now. Dad’s _dead_.”

The hand left Sam’s neck. But Luther kept sitting there, watching Sam cry and sob all over the bloody bed. It was a nice view, Sam guessed.

“You miss Kate?” Sam finally said. He had to cough several times before he got it out.

Luther blinked, then ducked his head and pulled at the white sheets beneath the comforter till he’d ripped off a strip. He handed it to Sam, who awkwardly began to wrap it around his cut wrist. “As much as I miss my children.”

That was a weird answer. It made Sam think long enough for him to not notice his throat had loosened up till he spoke again, and didn’t have to fight to sound like a human being. “Would you kill Dean? If I were dead?”

For a moment, Luther didn’t answer or look at Sam. He busied himself with scraping the clotting blood off his cheeks and hands, then discreetly sucking it off his fingers. “I’d say fifty-fifty. If he found you dead and me gone, he definitely would assume I had a part in it no matter how you died. But you know, it’s a hundred percent that any demons left—and there’s probably some—would try to kill him. And they’d probably manage to do it.”

“How are you so calm all the time? Why do you keep hanging around?” Sam said, some small part of him rousing enough to be annoyed. Because Luther was right, and Sam was together enough so that he couldn’t help but listen. And Dean was there, lying just beyond Luther and just as much of a presence in the discussion for all that he wasn’t actually capable of participating in it.

One side of Luther’s mouth quirked up. “I’m grieving too much to think properly, so I’m fixating on you because I’m used to fixating on something in order to keep on living.” He glanced at Sam, then shrugged. “It’s as good as anything else I could tell myself.”

Sam yanked the cloth tight around his wrist and tied it off. He felt like shit, and closer to passing out than before, but he was beginning to think about what they needed to do. They needed to get Dean fed somehow, and Luther too, because no matter how controlled Luther seemed, he still couldn’t stop trembling and…

Luther inhaled sharply just before their mouths met. He rocked back from the pressure, not doing anything at first, but just as Sam was pulling away, he suddenly lunged up into it. It took some hard shoving to get him off, and when he finally gave, he fell over onto one elbow.

“You know,” he rasped, breathing unevenly, “I’m not that calm.”

“You’re not getting any more of that, either. I just needed to get the last of the crazy out of my system so I can function,” Sam said, slowly getting off the bed. It was as good as anything else to tell himself.


	6. End of the Line

Dean woke up with an awful sour wetness coating his mouth. He raked his tongue over his upper incisors and swallowed, grimacing. Things tasted better after that.

His body was one large, raw sore. His head was muddled, and somehow he didn’t want to think through it and figure out what had happened and where he was. Where Sam and Dad—

\--oh.

The tears dissolved the crusts sticking his eyelashes together, so after a while he could look around. He stared at the water-stained ceiling. The air smelled like dust, blood and rotten meat, with enough of a trace of Sam that Dean didn’t immediately try to move. And Luther was around, too. Actually around; Sam had been out of the room for a while. “He saved your ass. He fucking saved you.”

When the pages stopped moving, that was when Dean heard them. “He’ll be back in fifteen minutes. He needed to eat.”

Dean braced himself, then rolled over. He ended up swearing a blue streak anyway, and as soon as he could, stopped moving. The sleeping roll beneath him was too thin to cushion against the pits in the concrete floor.

Luther was hunched over in the far corner on another roll, book propped up on his knees and right foot twisted awkwardly to keep it out of the sunlight coming through the lone broken window. He looked about two steps better than Dean felt, but he still wasn’t in the running for king of the night. Something else about him was off…his hair was longer. By a good half-inch.

“You’ve been in and out of consciousness for three weeks—you’ll probably remember those parts soon,” Luther said. He glanced up afterward, then went back to his book. The spine of it wasn’t completely visible to Dean thanks to Luther’s calf. “It took so long to heal because we were short of blood.”

For a second, Dean wondered whether ‘we’ referred to him and Luther, or to Luther and Sam. Then he decided it really didn’t matter, since he didn’t much like either. “So how the hell has Sam been feeding us? Not all by himself…”

That made Luther flinch in a weird way, though the rate at which he was reading didn’t falter. The side of his mouth twisted with bitter humor. “I think he was hitting blood banks at first—sneaking in as staff and stealing the bags just after they’d been filled. Then he found this spell that’ll transmute animal blood to human blood. It doesn’t work perfectly, but it cuts down a lot on how much of the real stuff you and I have to drink.”

“Guess that’s why we’re across the street from a butcher’s shop?” Dean blew hard through his nose till he felt his nostrils flaring. The smell was repulsively attractive, like pond scum to a man dying of thirst. “He’s still doing magic.”

“With a vengeance.” Luther paused, then put the book aside and hauled himself over to Dean, careful to avoid the scattered spots of light on the floor. It wasn’t a huge distance, but he still was starting to breathe heavily by the time he could bend down to be on the level with Dean. “Listen. It’s just about the only thing he can—maybe—control right now. If you really do care about his sanity, you’ll shut up about that.”

“Are you sure about that?” Dean icily asked. He let his eyebrow go up as far as it wanted.

Of course Luther got it. The damned son of a bitch seemed to get everything…everything except how to have two centuries of experience at his back and not get taken for a ride by a twenty-two-year-old. And it showed in his answering smile. “Yeah. I wouldn’t kill him when he wanted me to.”

“You…goddamned _bastard_ \--” God, it hurt to lunge like that. But God, was it good to knock Luther over and whack his head into the floor once. “You bloodsucking piece of—”

An elbow plowed into Dean’s stomach, sending him reeling over so he landed mostly off the bedroll. He heard Luther thump back, then hiss and scramble; Dean smelled a very faint trace of scorched flesh and snickered. Then he laughed, and then he put his head down and just let the terrible raw noises claw out of his throat till he ran out. Or till he got too tired to let them go. He wasn’t sure.

“You should tell him,” Luther eventually said. “Tell him suicide by vampire is a dumb thing to do. I could’ve made him into one.”

Against his better judgment, Dean was in sympathy with the bleak humor there. He was also in deep pain, and too incapacitated to do anything, so he had to lie there and think about it. Then he looked up and looked hard at Luther. “Yeah?”

“No,” Luther snorted. “I had a mate. I don’t want to replace her. And trying to turn Sam as anything else…I’m not suicidal yet.”

“Made up your mind about that, huh. So it isn’t just about the blood, and Sam’s crazy effect on bloodsuckers?” Dean was watching for the smallest tic in Luther’s poker-face, and he saw plenty. For a couple seconds he could’ve spit nails. Then it settled down, simmering but not calm again. But he hurt too much. “You two-faced asshole. Why the hell does he let you stay?”

A flicker of exasperation passed over Luther’s face, and he started back towards his corner. “He’s your brother. Ask him.”

“I thought you knew everything.”

“If I did, then I’d have better taste in the company I keep,” Luther spat back. He picked up his book—the title was in Latin, but that was as much as Dean got before Luther slammed it back on his legs.

The floor was too damned hard. After some rocking and cursing, Dean got himself back on the bedroll. It was funny how much a margin of comfort could mean sometimes. It was funny how much shock and repression could do for maintaining sanity sometimes. “Sam and I are probably the nicest company you’ve had in years.”

Luther sighed and rolled his eyes, and no, it wasn’t anything like how Dad did it, but the way it—

“Jesus!” The ceramic whatever-the-hell Dean had swiped from the floor smashed against the wall, right where Luther’s head had been. The book was too heavy to slide more than a few inches, so Luther ended up bashing his knee into it when he flattened himself against the floor. He stared wildly at Dean, then at the wall. And then he looked more composedly at Dean, who just wished he could break something else. It didn’t even have to be Luther’s face—just _something_.

So much for holding it together, Dean distantly thought.

Dean’s arm was killing him. He looked down the length of it and was pretty shocked, actually: the muscles had wasted so it reminded him of a toothpick. “He—” Luther moved and Dean snarled, because the fucking son of a bitch better not try to run out now “—Sam really tried to die? Right after--after Dad?”

“Yes,” Luther said. What he actually told Dean was _yes, with you still there, and yes, it was like when he tried to run into that flaming house, and yes, that means you’ve done a shitty job of taking care of him. Of making sure things didn’t get to him._

“What happened after you turned him down?” Did he try any other way? was what Dean really wanted to ask, but couldn’t work up to.

“…he had to get some blood in you.” Luther was cutting out a lot. His eyes dared Dean to press him on those points.

Fucking _son_ of a _bitch_. If Dean had had a choice, he would’ve taken that arrogant act and shoved it up Luther’s—but he didn’t, apparently. He’d been unconscious, and Dad—Dad dead—and Luther had stayed Sam. Stayed with him, which was something Dean had to be grateful for, thanks to the result.

Sam was still kicking around, and by all that was holy, he’d stay that way. He hadn’t gotten taken by the demon, and as long as Dean was around, he wasn’t going to be taken by anything else. Dean would make sure of that…no matter what it took, Dean reluctantly acknowledged. Maybe Sam wasn’t sure how far he’d go, but Dean knew how far _he’d_ go. Now.

Dean pulled in his arm and took a deep breath. He could remember the demon talking about a trap that’d been set for people like Sam…they’d have to figure out what that was and take care of it somehow.

He flicked his eyes up at Luther, who seemed to have settled back into placidity. Except for the tightness around his mouth, and the way he was turning those pages too fast.

“What’d you do? After you ended up a vampire, and decided you were just going to take it?” Dean asked. “What was the first thing you did?”

Luther lifted his head from the book and steadily regarded Dean for a good minute. Then he turned back to the book and began actually paying attention to what it was saying. “Learned how to read and write properly.” He glanced at Dean again, then snorted. “In English. It was the Western territories in the eighteen-thirties. But I wasn’t a part of that world anymore.”

“Picked up the Latin later?” Dean said after a second.

“The only people I’d known as a human that could read Latin were the priests and my friend. The demon killed my friend, priests weren’t good company anymore, so it seemed like a good idea. It’s paid off.” After another page, Luther abruptly sat back and stared up at the ceiling. He looked a little like he was going to laugh and a little like he was going to hurt that waterstain above him. “Sam and you. You keep making me think about what it was like when I was human.”

Dean wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment, or as an additional goad. In the end, he rolled onto his back and concentrated on healing up. Once he was back on his feet, he wouldn’t have to _take_ things. “Mostly Sam, I’m betting.” He tipped his head back to catch Luther’s eye. “Give me a reason—a hint of a reason, and I’ll be on you before you ever see me coming.”

Luther nodded, lifting another page.

* * *

“Shit, _shit_.” The bowl slipped through Dean’s fingers before he could catch it and hit the bottom of the sink. Blood splattered up all over: on him, on the counter, on the wall behind the sink.

“Towel,” Sam said. He handed over a stiff tan rectangle without looking, using his other hand to scribble notes. Sometime while Dean had been unconscious, Sam had switched from loose-leaf to an actual bound notebook. It even had a cover with a snap band to keep it closed.

The cover was made of some kind of plastic, but still…Dean worked at the thing Sam had handed him for twenty or thirty seconds, then looked down to see that it’d bent over like sheet metal. “Jesus. This actually is a towel. Or was.”

“Sorry. I had better ones, but I accidentally set them on fire two days ago. Anyway, I think we’re going to have to get moving in a day or so.” Sam turned around to mess in the cabinets and the notebook started to fold up. He absently smacked his hand over it, flattening it down again, and gave Dean an inadvertent look at the cramped writing and the thumbnail drawings done in heavy lines.

“Yeah?” Dean held the towel beneath running water till it had softened to the stiffness of paper, then mopped at his face.

When he lifted his head, Sam was lighting a thick-bodied, dull red candle. “Yeah. My nightmares are starting to turn into visions again. Something’s coming at us, so I’m thinking west.”

“Are we running away or towards?” Dean muttered. He dropped the towel in the sink; sluggish spirals of red water circled outwards from it like it was a maimed animal. “Sam. What are you doing?”

His brother blinked a few times, startled. He glanced at the candle and the flame wavered, going almost horizontal at times. “I talked to Bobby a week ago. Pastor Jim left us some stuff. And he filled in his replacement on things, so we can crash at the church. I was thinking…I could get it right this time. Do the spell over.”

“And then after that?”

“And then—and then I don’t know,” Sam snapped, hissing a bit at the end. His shoulders jerked up and he lifted his hands, then sliced them down. The movement turned him sideways, but he stopped himself with a hard blow to the edge of the counter. Sam exhaled and tipped his head up, eyes narrowing as if he were staring into the sun. “I don’t know, Dean. Dad’s—God, we didn’t even get a chance to bury him. That demon had something else set up, and I think that’s starting to come down, and I just don’t know. All I know is we can’t stop yet.”

“But we are eventually.” Dean raised his eyebrows at the confused look Sam gave him. “Stopping. Sooner or later, we’ll beat it and then it’ll be over.”

The way Sam looked at him then was despairing and contemptuous at the same time. “Don’t you think that’s a little naïve now?”

“No. No, I don’t.” A huge swell of anger buoyed Dean into stepping forward and grabbing Sam by the shoulder, and even through giving him a good shake. But maybe Dean broke something again by doing that, because then it all drained away to leave him collapsing onto Sam, who barely caught him in time. His ribs definitely hurt like he had. “Goddamn it, Sam—sometimes I’m barely holding it together here. And—and Dad’s _dead_ and didn’t you notice I waited all of a week before I went and got you the last time I couldn’t get to him?” 

Dean tried to pull himself back up onto his feet, but his fingers slipped off and went flying off to the side. They hit a bunch of razor-thin things that gave with crumpling noises: Sam’s _notebook_. It just about killed Dean’s ribcage and forearm, but he sent that damn thing soaring across the kitchenette to hit the wall hard enough to chip the drywall. The candle toppled into the sink and went out with a sharp, short sizzle.

Then he slumped over. His knees hadn’t been all that happy with the twisting motion he’d needed either, and when Sam tried to set him back up, they gave out. Only a last-minute grab at Sam’s neck kept Dean from falling on his ass. Physically, anyway. As far as the rest was concerned, he wasn’t sure he’d even been back up on his feet.

Sam breathed past Dean’s ear and it sounded a little like words, but at the last moment, Sam blurred them into incoherency. He momentarily tightened his arms around Dean, then shifted them so he was holding Dean more by the waist, getting the pressure off the fragile, barely-healed ribs. Dean didn’t have any such compunctions and pulled hard on the arm he had around Sam’s neck and shoulders, burying his face till he couldn’t smell anything but his brother’s sweat and dirt. 

Stubble scraped over Dean’s temple, then moved away. It wasn’t long before Sam’s hands started shifting uncertainly across Dean’s lower back, positioning themselves to help Dean move back but not quite having the balls to actually push before Dean did. Sam sucked in his breath and started to say something. Cut himself off, but his stiffening body language signaled his discomfort clearly enough.

Dean was sorry about that, and deep down hated himself for not being able to help himself, but he held on anyway. “Sam. Don’t change me back yet.”

“ _What_?” Now Sam felt like an iron statue. “But—”

“I’ve got a better chance of surviving what’s coming like this. If I’d been a human, I’d still be bedridden right now and you’d just have to leave me somewhere. And I’m not leaving. You’re not going after whatever the hell it is by yourself,” Dean muttered, like talking low and fast was going to make it sound any better. He moved his free hand up to latch onto Sam’s arm, slid his head so he was talking directly into Sam’s ear. “Hell. You won’t be the only freak around this way.”

“I wasn’t to begin with,” Sam replied. He sounded like hysterical laughter was trying to break through his anger, or maybe it was the other way around. Then he jerked. “Dean, is this because you and Luther have that—”

This time, it was Dean’s turn to go stiff. He slowly leaned back to look Sam in the eye, but he hadn’t been expecting that intense a stare. He blinked, and Sam sucked in air so fast it cracked against his teeth.

Sam looked at Dean another second, pressing his lips together. Then he shook his head. “No—”

“If I’m still a vampire, then you’ve _got_ to live. Because there’s no way—no goddamned way you’re gonna leave me like this after it’s all done,” Dean hurriedly, urgently said. He dug his fingers into Sam’s arm and shoulder, glanced down and then back up. “Look, yeah. That other thing—it crossed my mind. I can’t make it not—but mostly it’s for this reason.”

“Oh, Jesus…” Looking away, Sam gently but pointedly put a couple inches between them. He didn’t make any move to pry Dean’s hands off of him, but he let go himself. One hand came up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “Are you blackmailing me?”

“Hell, yes,” Dean said. His smile was shaky and didn’t last for more than a second. He bit his lip and stared at their feet. “Why is Luther still alive, by the way?”

Sam dropped his hand and looked wearily at Dean. He shrugged. “Well, he knows useful information, and apparently he has some kind of obsession with me. I thought we could use every advantage we can get.” His eyes flickered. “Mostly.”

“I’m not sure I like this side of you,” Dean said after a moment’s thought.

For some reason, Sam found this funny. His mouth twisted up in a harsh half-smile. “Yeah, and I’m trying not to get used to it. But it’s hard. It’s getting mixed up with all this other stuff, and…”

“I know.” God, did Dean. Signals got crossed one too many times, and suddenly one thing led to the wrong reaction, but it was tough to jettison anything when they had so little to begin with.

After a while, Sam bent slightly, trying to slip out of Dean’s grip. Dean reflexively tightened his fingers and the muscle in Sam’s jaw twitched. He raised his hands to lay them on Dean’s arms, but didn’t push right away. “Okay.” He waited a second. “All right. I won’t fight you on this one. Dean. _Dean_.”

Dean flinched forward, then pulled himself back with so much force that he couldn’t stop before his back hit the counter. He took one deep, unsteady breath, and then a second one. Then he was…functioning. He couldn’t really look at Sam. “Sorry.”

Tense silence. Then Sam turned away. “I’ll get you another bowl.”

“Thanks,” Dean slowly said. He closed his eyes and pulled himself up against the counter, trying not to listen too hard to Sam’s heartbeat.


End file.
